Teach
CoRT Thinking Tools…
and
equip your students to become excellent lifelong thinkers.

"...CoRT is
straightforward, ingenious, and quite easy to apply. Intelligence can be
taught with CoRT." --David Perkins, Ph.D
80850--CoRT Thinking Lessons--CoRT 1 Breadth Thinking
Tools: The Complete Learning, Planning, and Teaching Guide for Teachers,
Administrators, and Home Schoolers, Edward de Bono, 198 pages.
Click here
to read the contents and introduction section PDF
80851 Student Notes CoRT 1 Breadth Thinking Tools: Easy
to Follow Learning Guide for Students Aged 8-Adult, Edward de Bono,
20 pages. Easy to follow student work cards that reinforce the purpose
of each thinking tools.
A Message from Edward de Bono: CoRT Thinking Lessons have
been taught in schools since the mid 1970s. They have since become the
most widely used school materials for the direct teaching of thinking as
a basic skill worldwide.
All of this experience has contributed to developing CoRT Thinking
Lessons that
- Are practical and hands on in nature.
- Can be taught as a separate subject--thinking skills--or
embedded in existing curriculum to strengthen student learning and
develop independent thinkers.
- Are focused on equipping students to become effective,
open-minded thinkers--critical, creative, constructive, and
comprehensive.
- Address the increasing interest and recognition for the need to
teach thinking as a basic skill along with reading, writing, and
mathematics; the traditional basics.
-
Can be used in a wide variety of situations from
schools in disadvantaged areas to elite schools to students being
home schooled.
- Appeal to a wide range of ages (6-adult) and abilities (IQs of
75-140).
It used to be felt that a person with a high IQ would naturally be an
effective thinker. This doesn't seem to be the case. Some people with
high IQs turn out to be relatively ineffective thinkers. Some people
with much more humble IQs turn out to be more effective thinkers. Here
is my definition of thinking:
Thinking: "The operational
skill with which intelligence acts upon experience."
For example, if IQ is equivalent to the
horsepower of a car then thinking skill is equivalent to driving skill.
Just because a car has huge horsepower doesn't mean the car will be
driven well. It takes a skilled driver.
This important realization has led many schools for the
exceptionally gifted to teach CoRT Thinking Lessons as a
deliberate attempt to help their gifted students avoid the "intelligence
trap" which occurs when a high IQ is not accompanied by effective
thinking skills.
The general method used is what I call the "glasses
method." If you have poor eyesight you cannot see the world clearly.
With glasses you can see the world more clearly. As a result your
actions can be more appropriate and you behavior more effective.
Experience has shown that students who learn these thinking tools
develop a much broader view of situation. They are more complete in
their thinking.
Edward de Bono
CoRT Thinking Lessons
- Challenge “gifted” students and strengthens “remedial” students.
- Equips students with practical tools to become excellent
lifelong thinkers--creative, constructive, critical, and productive.
- Helps students learn to think things through before acting.
- Enables schools to infuse the teaching of thinking across all age and
ability levels.
- Develops specific thinking skills to improve performance in all
subject areas.
- Helps to improve yearly assessment scores.
- Provides structured discussion tools for group work.
The CoRT Thinking Program
- CoRT is broken into 6 segments of 10 lessons each. Each lesson teaches a
new thinking tool.
- CoRT 1 Breadth Thinking Lessons are taught first. Next, you can
teach the segment that
best meets students’ needs, or you can teach the whole program systematically.
- The lessons follow the same format for consistency.
- Practice topics are provided that help students learn how each
tool works.
- Reproducible student work cards are included in the Teachers
books.
- Each student is to receive a copy of each student work card.
- Once students learn each tool teachers are encouraged to assign
relevant thinking topics of their own design.
CoRT 1: Breadth—helps students broaden perception—they should know
more about each thinking situation after using the tools than they knew
before they started.
CoRT 2: Organization—gives students a variety of tools to organize their
thinking.
CoRT 3: Interaction—helps students observe the thinking involved in
arguments, how a point of view is presented or defended, and the value
and types of evidence.
CoRT 4: Creativity—students learn tools to generate fresh new solutions
to challenges.
CoRT 5: Information and Feeling—tools to separate emotions from
facts.
CoRT 6: Action—begins with the purpose and ends with specific action
steps for the implementation of the outcome of thinking.
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