Developing a Thinking Skills Component in the Gifted Education Program.

As a result of our experience in developing thinking skills components within gifted education programs, we have identified several key issues in the creation of an effective thinking skills program. We believe that although the development of improved questioning strategies and classroom environments to enhance thinking skills is a vital and often neglected aspect of cognitive instruction, the actual teaching of thinking skills is even more important. We define “direct instruction” as the development and use of lesson plans that describe, define and model the appropriate strategies for applying a particular thinking skill. Given the necessary training and planning time, teachers can learn to develop units of instruction to introduce, practice and transfer a given thinking skill. By observing as the teacher models the use of these strategies, and by engaging in guided practice, the student can be “coached” to attain skill mastery and will eventually be able to transfer this new thinking skill to appropria...