HOT Skills Challenge #5 – Thinking CAP

Let’s encourage each learner to put on a Thinking CAP, throughout the summer:

As we’ve talked about different ways to instill HOT Skills (Higher Order Thinking Skills) in our learners,  we’ve discussed ways to be Creative, Analytical, and Practical.  In Dr. Robert Sternberg's work, Successful Intelligence, he contends that successful people learn to integrate and use three components of intelligence for thinking:  Creative, Analytical, and Practical.     

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Sternberg spells out his definition of intelligence by saying, 
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“Successful intelligence is the kind 
of intelligence used to achieve important 
goals. People who succeed, 

whether by their own standards 
or by other people’s,   

are those who have managed to 
acquire, develop, and apply 

a full range of intellectual skills, 

rather than merely relying on 
the inert intelligence 
that schools so value. 

These individuals may or may not 
succeed on conventional tests, 

but they have something in common 

that is much more important 
than high test scores. 

They know their strengths; 
they know their weaknesses. 

They capitalize on their strengths; 

they compensate for or 
correct their weaknesses.” 

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Key functions in each aspect of intelligence include:

• ·        C-reative:  create, invent, discover, imagine, suppose, predict

• ·        A-nalytical:  analyze, critique, judge, compare/contrast, evaluate, assess

• ·        P-ractical:  apply, connect, use (useful), put into practice, implement, employ

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If you've participated in the HOT Skills challenge, staff development, and/or WOW, you have already given your learners some of these tools for thinking!  Before summer break, why not discuss with your learners ways to put on their Thinking CAPs throughout the summer?

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Here are our Gibbs' WOW, for review:


·       1-  Fluency

·       2-  Flexibility

·       3-  Originality

·       4-  Elaboration

·       5-  Creativity

·       6-  Creative thinking

·       7-  Cause / Effect

·       8-  Because

·       9-  Compare (and contrast)

·       10- Classify

·       11- Differentiate

·       12- Predict

·       13- Revise

·       14- Edit

·       15- Modify

·       16- Analyze

·       17- Practical

·       18- Thinking C.A.P.