What Level is Your Thinking??

Isn't that the cutest graphic?  Michelle, from The 3 am Teacher, made this for me and I just love it so much!!!!  I described to her in an email what I was visualizing and she was able to come up with it and make it look great!!  If you need any graphics, please go to Michelle.  She is great to work with and as you can see, she does great work! 

If you would like to have this poster, just click on it and you can grab it for free from my store in my reading posters collection.   I would love to have you follow my store too.  :) 

Now to explain what this poster is all about.  Krista, over at The Second Grade Superkids, sparked this idea for me.  I needed a way to teach deeper level thinking and to be visual about it so my kids could understand and remember it better.  I saw a post on this at Krista's blog.  

My kids hear me saying all the time, I want deeper thinking.  No surface level thinking.  They know this inside and out.  To demonstrate this, I took a glass of water and a plastic golf ball.  I dropped the ball into the water for effect and the students could see that it floats on top of the water.  We discussed how this was surface level thinking and that is NOT want Mrs. Vines wants from her students.  

Then we discuss how we should dive down deeper into our brains.  This we call deeper level thinking.  I use these two levels of thinking all of the time, but especially when I teach inferences.  You can see that post here.  To demonstrate deeper level thinking, I drop a real golf ball in a glass of water so they can see it dive to the bottom.

Now, I loved the visual demonstration of the golf balls in the water, but I didn't like keeping the glasses of water around all of the time as visual aids.  My students needed the visual reminder, but I was afraid the glasses would get broken and they were in the way.  That is where Michelle came in.  Now, I have this beautiful poster to hang in my room and I don't have to have the real glasses hanging around all of the time.  I love the visual aid to help my students to dive deeper into their brains when analyzing reading!  Head over to Michelle's blog and tell her how much you love her graphics!