What Type of Thinker Are You?

There’s a teacher trap we’ve all fallen into, and that’s labeling our students as “low” or “high”. We’ve all done it. There must be a better way.

Just like the CRA or CPA model of teaching mathematics, we can start viewing and describing our students by the type of thinker they are. What we want to stress is that thinking is flexible; it isn’t fixed. Students can work in and out of the circles on a daily basis, maybe even minute-by-minute. By allowing students to reflect on how they think, it allows them to articulate their learning and gain a deeper understanding as we try to reach the sweet spot in the middle.

Teachers can use this visual to teach students the different ways of thinking.

Students need to have the ability to self-reflect and set goals for themselves. By using our template, students can plot their own thinking and see which type of thinking they still need to develop. This would be a great tool to use as a starting point in a student’s portfolio. It could also be used for the beginning and end of a unit by asking our students, “Has my thinking evolved?”

Teachers can use this template to plot the students in their class. Feel free to use this however you want, but we were thinking that you could put your students’ initials in the various sections.

You can download a student friendly and printable version along with the teacher class view here.

If you’d like an editable version, please email us at learningthroughmath@gmail.com.

Student Samples

See some real student samples below. You can see students need practice to think about what each type of thinker means. Please note, after trying this with students, we decided to change “Model It” to “Build It” since you can see there was confusion with “Model It” meaning “Draw It”.

It’s always a pleasure,

Laura and Karina