1. Flipped Instruction Description

86. SIT: Surprising, Interesting, Troubling
Definition
A SIT analysis asks students to list aspects of a lesson that were surprising, interesting and troubling. It is useful following the viewing of a short film or reading a book about a topic that seems bizarre or a fact that is counterintuitive.
Like a KWL chart, you could do this task by splitting paper into three columns: one for ‘surprising’, one for ‘interesting’ and one for ‘troubling’.
Benefits

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  Gets students to take a critical stance and make judgements (particularly for ‘troubling’)
  
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  Is a good way to take stock of students’ interests in order to create follow-up lessons based on topics the students have already demonstrated concern for.
  

Challenges

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  The ‘troubling’ part is often hard for students to complete – consider explicitly modeling a sample response before asking students to complete it alone.
  

Theoretical Link
Critical theory: students can use a SIT analysis to critique the justice or inequality issues presented in a text.
87. Higher Order Thinking
Definition
When writing a lesson plan, it’s often a very good idea to note any time you’re encouraging higher order thinking – especially if there’s a column in your lesson plan for ‘teaching strategies’. This help people reading the lesson plan to see that you’ve been intentional about promoting higher order thinking.
Following Bloom’s taxonomy, higher order thinking usually includes tasks that involve verbs like: Judge Appraise, Evaluate, Compare, Criticize, Assess, Estimate, Deduce, Hypothesize and Generalize.


Benefits

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  Helps a teacher to be more explicit in their language and to ensure a lesson is challenging for students.
  
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  Ensures students are practicing their critical thinking skills rather than just repeating a teacher’s ‘facts’.
  

Challenges

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  For higher order thinking tasks, it’s important that you don’t give students the answers. Instead, give them hints, pointers and resources that will help them to come up with the answers on their own.