Bridging the Gap from Concrete to Full Formal Thinking in the Content Areas.

Effective teaching strategies must be developed to help students bridge the gap between concrete operational thinking and full formal thinking in the content areas. Reading for meaning requires readers to categorize subjects, recognize relationships, develop and maintain a sequence of thought, recognize and understand inferences, and draw conclusions. Teachers must teach students to (1) recognize the impact of certain key words that provide cues for forming hypotheses; (2) make Inferential deductions by showing them explicitly how an argument is developed by an author; (3) ask questions and consider possible answers to them; (4) compare and contrast, a productive linking exercise that develops decision-making abilities; (5) organize information by examining structure apart front content, such as in hierarchy development; (6) see more than one side of an issue and generate all of the possible interrelationships between the components of particular situations; and (7) be critical thinkers, alert to the subtleties in the material they read. In addition, teachers can use charts and graphs to encourage students to raise questions, spark group discussions, draw attention to the concept of variable as opposed to static situations, heighten the level of classroom motivation to examine material carefully, and demonstrate the interrelationships between several disciplines. (JD) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************