Metaphorical Thinking Activities

At the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year, the sixth grade science team decided to focus on metaphorical thinking as a nonfiction reading strategy.  Looking at end of grade testing numbers in language arts, we noticed that our current students struggle with nonfiction reading and that our school often struggles to challenge our top performing students. 

Here's our SMART goal:

6th-Science-SMARTgoal2011.doc  

This page will contain all of the materials that we develop for teaching metaphorical thinking in the science classroom.

Metaphorical Exemplars

Exemplars_StudentMetaphors_SciMethod.pdf

This document contains a collection of four exemplars of student responses to a metaphorical thinking activity connecting objects in a curiosity box to the scientific method.  Each exemplar includes an image of the object that students made comparisons to, one group's response, and a series of teacher comments rating the work of the group.  This document can be used in combination with the Metaphorical Rubric below by students, teachers and parents to start judging the quality of metaphorical connections being made in class.

Rating Metaphorical Exemplars

Handout_RatingMetaphoricalExemplars.docx

This handout can be used by teachers with students -- or by teams of teachers -- in conjunction with the Metaphorical Thinking Scoring Rubric to begin to better understand the range of student performance that is common on metaphorical thinking activities.  It can also be used to standardize teacher grading on this subjective task. 

Metaphorical Scoring Rubric

Handout_MetaphoricalThinkingRubric.doc

This rubric should be used by all teachers to score student efforts to connect content that we are studying in class to the metaphorical objects selected from our curiosity boxes. 

Metaphorical Brainstorming Sheet

Handout_MetaphoricalBrainstormingSheet.doc

This is a simple brainstorming sheet that can be given to students as they start to develop their metaphorical comparisons.  It is probably best used by students who struggle with our metaphorical thinking activity. 

Metaphorical Thinking Organizer

Handout_MetaphoricalThinkingOrganizer.doc

This organizer can be used to guide student thinking both during and after reading a nonfiction selection in class.  It includes four different metaphorical prompts designed to get students to think creatively about the content that they are studying. 

Metaphorical Rating Handout

Handout_MetaphoricalThinkingStudentReflections.doc

This organizer can be used by students to rate the quality of the metaphors created by their peers.  It is best used after classes have shared their metaphorical reflections and can help students to track their thinking during classroom presentations. 

Curiosity Box Introduction

http://bit.ly/no3WTD

This weblink connects to a bit that Bill Ferriter wrote to his parents to introduce our curiosity box project.  Feel free to copy the language completely as you work to develop your own curiosity boxes. 

Class Data Report Sheet

Student Rating Sheet Matrix.docx

Sheet used to collect and analyze data from all four of your class.  Using a classrecord sheet from NCWise is a useful accompaniment to this for tracking indvidual data.