Help your teen build three-story thinking for reasoning & problem-solving

While students capture the knowledge content of their courses, we also are gradually teaching them to use three levels of thinking: 

Your practice with your student at home matters. It will help them navigate everyday challenges successfully and build these skills to the level that adult challenges require.

• GATHER all the known and knowable information necessary to the situation. Below you will find skills needed for this step. Determining when enough information is gathered takes judgment that students develop over time.
• PROCESS and examine the material GATHERED using skills listed below.
• APPLY what they know and what they think about what they know to resolve problems, further understanding, and create.

For 12th graders—Students should be able to use all three levels of thinking independently to address complex adult challenges. They should work toward becoming adept at synthesis and evaluation of what they learn in the bottom two levels.

For 11th graders—Students should have mastered the first two levels and use them independently. Their ability to independently APPLY what they they gain from the first two levels will develop rapidly with some coaching during their final years of high school.

For 10th graders— Students should be able to independently GATHER the information that will be needed. And be learning to PROCESS what they learn in ways that make that knowledge useful to the situation.

For 9th graders—Students develop the ability to find information, judge its accuracy and value, and determine when they have enough to work with.

Start at the bottom of the table and build thinking through the three levels of increasingly complex thinking.

Download the info-graphic to guide your student's continuing practice to master the skills below.

APPLY

Three-story thinkers idealize, imagine, and predict. Their best illumination comes through this skylight of their three-story thinking.

PROCESS

Two-story thinkers can independently apply various processing skills to understand how the knowledge they gather in level one might apply to a situation.

GATHER

The foundation of thinking requires the ability to gather factual and correct information from reliable sources. One-story thinkers have no aim beyond their facts.