Small Shifts, Big Impacts
"There’s a lot of good stuff going on in our classrooms. Let’s build on top of the good work you’re doing. This isn’t to displace it—it’s to tweak and fortify what you already have, making small but impactful shifts that lead to better thinking and engagement."
—Garfield Gini-Newman, TC² Senior Consultant
In this episode of the ShiftED Podcast, Garfield offers practical ways to spark deeper thinking and meaningful engagement by making small but impactful shifts in your practice. Garfield’s insights are a reminder that transformative learning doesn’t require starting from scratch. It’s about building on what’s already working well—tweaking and fortifying your existing approaches to help learners think more critically, creatively, and collaboratively.
What Does This Look Like in Practice?
Garfield shares strategies you can apply right away to foster deeper thinking, meaningful engagement, and sustained inquiry:
- Tweak: Refine your questions to invite deeper thinking. For example, instead of asking for four facts, ask students for the two most compelling facts, prompting them to evaluate and justify their choices.
- Fortify: Equip learners with the intellectual tools they need to think critically, such as:
- Build relevant background knowledge to provide a foundation for inquiry.
- Use criteria for judgment to guide thoughtful decisions.
- Clarify thinking vocabulary so learners understand key terms like analyze and evaluate.
- Use thinking strategies such as graphic organizers to support thinking and decision-making.
- Nurture habits of mind such as perseverance, independence, and empathy to enhance thinking and foster deeper engagement.
- Learning Launches: Hook students from the start with engaging questions or scenarios that spark curiosity and immediately invite critical and creative thinking. Rather than saving the best tasks for the end of a unit, try starting a lesson or unit with a thought-provoking question that sustains inquiry over time.
Listen to the full podcast