Learning Unleashed
Professional Learning in your Inbox
February 2024
Our Future Demands Critical & Creative Thinking
LISD learners are empowered to be Critical and Creative Thinkers who seek and solve problems through curiosity, flexibility, and innovation. Explore a few of the following resources to spark ideas that can support developing the skills of inquiry, flexible thinking, and problem solving in students and adults alike!
- Why You Should Be Asking More Questions In Your Classroom
- Engage Students by Cultivating Their Curiosity
- Teaching Students About Systems Thinking
- A Critical Thinking Framework for Elementary Students
- How to Teach an Inductive Learning Lesson
- Teaching Students How to Use Wikipedia as a Tool for Research
- Ed Tip: Academic Integrity in the Age of AI
What does this look like to be a Critical and Creative Thinker, for our earliest learners all the way through our LISD staff? Check out the Graduate Profile "I Can" statements.
The Critical and Creative Thinkers attribute of the Graduate Profile highlights the skills of inquiry, flexible thinking, and problem solving. Stage 1 of your LISD curriculum documents provide guidance in leveraging both the content and process standards toward larger transfer goals, with essential questions designed to promote inquiry. The performance tasks in Stage 2 of the curriculum documents give students authentic scenarios to apply and transfer their learning.
Don't hesitate to reach out to your curriculum team for support regarding critical and creative thinking in your content area.
Explore the ✨Magic ✨of MagicSchool AI!
If you haven’t discovered the amazingness of MagicSchool.AI, now is your chance! We are participating in a pilot until the end of the school year that provides full access to all of the current and new AI prompts, with help from Raina the chatbot! Don’t forget to sign in with Google. The possibilities are endless, but consider just a few of the things that MagicSchool can help with:
Generate AI-resistant assignments
Submit rubrics and ask for exemplars
Create skills-based rubrics for any subject
Create model writing samples
Find real-world connections
Write a custom song or parody!
Productive Struggle is one way to deepen the conceptual understanding of “three to five big ideas” and ultimately encourage outside-the-box thinking.
How can you “create the right classroom conditions that give kids the permission (and the self-confidence) to fail?” Helping Young Kids Manage Productive Struggle uncovers easy-to-employ strategies that work for students at all levels!
“Deep thinking and focus are dispositions that need to be cultivated and sustained…research suggests that when kids are given the latitude and the time to grapple with struggling tasks, they encode conceptual understanding. more deeply.”
Learn it LIVE!
Don't you wish you could just see the thing you want to learn about live and in action, instead of just reading about it?!? Did you know you can collaborate with and visit the classrooms of Learning Leaders from across the district? They have opened their classrooms up for others to observe student learning in action! Check out the Learning Leader Observation Classroom process. For more info, visit the Learning Leaders website
The Learning Unleashed newsletter is designed to keep #1LISD continually growing and improving by connecting us to just-in-time ideas, content, and resources aligned to our Learning Model and guiding philosophies.
Check out past editions of Learning Unleashed.
Contact Us
For more opportunities for professional learning provided by Leander ISD, check out Eduphoria Strive.
Email: professional.development@leanderisd.org
Website: https://sites.google.com/leanderisd.org/professional-learning/home
Phone: 512.570.0209
Twitter: @LISD_IPL