PART A

No curriculum can be regarded as acceptable unless it can be shown to make a contribution to the
teaching of thinking

Nowadays, we notice that most of the graduates very difficult to get a job. That is because they lack
of skills and knowledge to connect with the real world. Real world is full of challenges and difficulties.
Normally, this is the product by traditional curriculum but it does not mean that it is a poor way to produce
good quality students. Last few decades, the education has been using traditional curricular. It is able to
produce students that contribute a lot in this society. However, our society is in the progress of improving.
This is one of the reasons to change the style of teaching too.
We know that the reason why we send our children to school. That is because we want children to be
able to learn the knowledge and skills to survive before they enter the society that connects with the real
world. However, if they only depend on the traditional curriculum, that is not enough. It must incorporate
with the thinking curriculum together too. Thinking curriculum is a way to provide a chance for the students
to learn how to overcome learning stress and how to get a good solution without relaying on parents.
Traditional curriculum expects students to be able to learn the knowledge from the textbook.
However, how many percent of students are able to connect the knowledge with the real world? World
changes from time to time. A teacher is responsible to teach students how to fish, and not feed fish to the
students.
Most of the teachers nowadays rush in completing syllabus; it will kill students idea. They want to
complete the syllabus on time. In this case, the teachers are not contributing to students in letting them to
have their own thinking. In long term, it will indirectly set a format in students mindset to only follow the
instructions from teachers. Under this output, students lack the skills to survive. We must understand that
how the teacher transfers knowledge to the students and what the students get from the teacher. Students
must learn how to learn, how to organize the information, and how to recognize which the information more
important.
As a new era teacher, to show how they contribute to the student to have the skills of thinking is very
important. Educator is a special job, audience cannot check the output immediately or in short period. It is
takes longer time to see the effect. With the past experiences, teachers are able change the lesson from
boring to attractive for students to learn.
Besides that, teacher from notion reflection will guide them how to develop themselves to improve
with the latest knowledge and technology. With this improvement in their knowledge, teachers are able to
know what happen in this society, and able to understand their students more. This can avoid generation gap
between students and teacher.
To make thinking curriculum a success in teaching, school must encourage and acquire thinking as
well as the development of critical awareness. School must understand that students result cannot represent
what theyve learn is effective or otherwise. School should emphasize on the teacher to carry out more class
exercises or experiments rather than to ask the students doing homework and memorizes the important
information. School must understand that if students only learn from text, there is no point for them to come
to school. That is because they also can learn it at home. Plus, traditional teaching method is no longer
suitable for the new century.
Students going through the activities do not only learn how to communicate with instructors but it
also provides the opportunities for them to increase their knowledge. In addition, through these activities, it
also will help the to increase their skills in facing how to co-operate with each other. It also improves
students understanding. Practice enables students to remember more and they will be more independent to
find out the answer if they are interested.
Thinking skills is very important for everyone, especially for younger children. They are as white as
paper. How their future look like depends on how the teacher paints it. This is because they acquire most
knowledge and information in school. It also depends on how the teacher integrates the traditional
curriculum with thinking skills.
What is thinking curriculum? Thinking curriculum is orientations to problem solving and critical and
creative thinking. It attributes are carried out in collaboration with students, teachers, parents, and
community members using the tools and resources to perform real-world task. Thinking curriculum is to
train people to treat the task as indivisible whole too. Every single action is related to the whole task. Under
this curriculum, students are able to learn to take control over their own learning. In addition, this
curriculum also improves students confidence level. Without confidence, students find it very difficult to
think what is the next step.
Principal plays a very important role in the school. If principal only concern academic performance
but does not concern either the knowledge students is able to be utilised in the future, it is difficult for
teachers who delivers the thinking curriculum. Besides that, a principal must be open minded in accepting
teacher using thinking curriculum.

Teachers must integrate a few skills in their lesson to enable students to think. These skills are
common and are able to apply in any content area or subject. The skills include cause and effect, decision-
making, comparing and contrasting, classifying, making observation, planning, and predicting.
Cause and effect is the first skill, which students need to learn. This skill is trying to determine the
relationship between cause and effect. This will lead the students to identify the action to be analyzed.
Students need to think which is more important? It is either the cause or effect? After that, teacher needs to
guide them to solve the problem. With the new thinking curriculum, teachers are advised to not directly
provide students with correct answer. This is to give students space and time to think. This is very effective
to let students study on their own after lessons. This is because they know that they will have new task to
solve everyday, and the knowledge besides from text are very important to assist them. With more practice,
students know that prior knowledge is very important. They will be more independent to read the text before
the lesson start and not depending on teacher solely.
The next skill is decision making. Apart from identifying the cause and effect, decision-making plays
an important role. Students must based on their understanding, complete their knowledge to make decision
to solve the problem. Once teacher teach a new lesson and end with question, students need to think how to
answer it. This is one of the method, where teacher leads students to have their own thinking. While students
consider how to make their decision, they need to decide between competing alternatives. One of the
example is students need to compare all the alternatives before they decide on future action. It enables
students to have brainstorming. Teacher can recommend students to read a novel to practise the brain to
think. Example, students can read a police story novel to think why the character to make this decision?
What factor influences him in making this decision and so on. With more reading, it trains students to think
critical and they will be able to make decision with well.
After teacher teaches a new lesson, he will guide students to learn to compare and constrast.
Comparing is defined as the ability to look similarity in a set of objects. Contrasting is to look a set of object
and emphasize their different. Students who fo through these activities will be able to think out of the box.
This will let students practice on using their brain how to think. Example, teacher can give a task to students
to learn the comparing and constricting skills. The task could be asking students to go to grocery shop and
buy a can food. Students need to compare the can brands, prices, and conditions. With more practice,
students can learn the skill automatically. In the next lesson, students are able to learn the new concept more
efficiently.
With the traditional curriculum incorporates with the thinking curriculum, it will educate the
students well. Besides learning the basic knowledge from the text, they will also be able to connect their
understanding to suit the situation. They gain the knowledge on how to interpret and organize the situation
with multicultural background. Thinking curriculum is very important for students. The reason is very
simple, that is to prepare students in facing the worldwide society.