How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

Petruchio

As a teacher, I wonder if it is possible to instill this skill into students the skills of rationality and critical thinking. I teach the third grade, and it is not immediately apparent how to apply this with my own class.

The problems I foresee are as follows:

Young children often do not know the basics on the subject which they are learning, be it math, science, art, religion, literature etc.
Many children are very shy, and try to give as short of an answer as doable to a verbal prompt.
Written prompts are arduous, straining the attention span and writing capabilities of the students. This is not a bad thing, but it presents difficulties in the economy of time and material to be presented.
Attention spans in general are very short.
Experiments can be very infrequent, and nigh impossible with certain subjects.
Children, at this age, are likely to take the words of a parent or teacher at face value, and naturally parrot it back. This may be a hard habit to break.

In the sequences, it is suggested teachers should drill into students words don't count, only anticipation-controllers. How practical is this for an elementary school level? Also appreciated would be any ideas or experiences on how to do this, or how to combat the above problems. Hearing from other teachers would be excellent especially.

The problems I foresee are as follows:

Young children often do not know the basics on the subject which they are learning, be it math, science, art, religion, literature etc.
Many children are very shy, and try to give as short of an answer as doable to a verbal prompt.
Written prompts are arduous, straining the attention span and writing capabilities of the students. This is not a bad thing, but it presents difficulties in the economy of time and material to be presented.
Attention spans in general are very short.
Experiments can be very infrequent, and nigh impossible with certain subjects.
Children, at this age, are likely to take the words of a parent or teacher at face value, and naturally parrot it back. This may be a hard habit to break.

Another way to get students to accept critizism would be to let each student rewrite his text after the feedback and then grade the revised version.

Having a peer critique one's work and offer corrections, and not take it as a status affront, is and act that requires some maturity, and many people never learn to do it at all.

Saying many people never learn the skill at all is just another way of saying that today's schools are very bad at teaching the skill.

To me the skill seems on of the most important that children should learn in school.

I think it makes sense to try to teach the skill as early as possible. Of course, when trying something new it's importance to see how it works in practice and calibrate on the reactions of actual students.

Another way to get students to accept critizism would be to let each student rewrite his text after the feedback and then grade the revised version.

But this runs into the problem I mentioned before, that some students will have plenty of correction to offer others' work, but little correction to receive from their peers. So instead of "everyone needs to learn to accept correction gracefully," you risk teaching them "regular/stupid people need to learn to accept correction from smart people."

If I had been put through such activities a... (read more)

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How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

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How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

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