Teaching for Thinking Today

These are turbulent times. We live in a climate of vigorous testing and memorization, so how can we both engage and challenge our children to learn and become thinking citizens in our society? In her invaluable new book, Selma Wassermann takes a step forward from Louis Rath’s seminal work and gives us some truly helpful answers to this modern dilemma. Using new data from her extensive field work, Wassermann (a co-author of Teaching for Thinking, Second Edition) provides a wealth of innovative classroom strategies that will enable and empower students to grasp the “big ideas” across virtually all curriculum areas and apply this knowledge to problem solving. Using a teacher-friendly style, this practical book:

Provides the theoretical framework, tools, and teaching strategies to implement teaching-for-thinking programs in K–8 classrooms.
Offers applications for classroom implementation in key curriculum areas of science, math, language arts, social studies, computer studies, art, and music.
Demonstrates how the standard classroom curriculum can be “tweaked” to emphasize higher-order cognitive skills.

Selma Wassermann is Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. Her books includeSerious Players in the Primary Classroom, The New Teaching Elementary Science: Who’s Afraid of Spiders?, Teaching for Thinking, and This Teaching Life: How I Taught Myself to Teach.

“As a teacher in 1967, I used the first edition of Teaching for Thinking to guide my work with students. Selma Wassermann now has imaginatively woven together new theory, strategies, and activities for thinking into a treasure trove for another generation of teachers committed to inquiry and the cultivation of student thinking. Bravo!”

—Larry Cuban, Professor Emeritus of Education, Stanford University

“Selma Wassermann's narratives capture well the substance and spirit of the philosophy of teaching for thinking developed earlier by Louis Raths, with her significant help. The text shares how recent research and development have enriched our understandings of the power of the theory presented here and the efficacy of its classroom applications.”

—James Raths, Professor Emeritus, University of Delaware