Summary for Educators: You Don’t Have to Add More to Teach Students How to Think

In “You Don’t Have to Add More to Teach Students How to Think: Upgrading Your Students’ Brain Engine,” Dr. Nicole Moriarty and Patricia Broderick argue that we don’t need to pile on new programs or content to shift student thinking—instead, we can embed consistent routines into what we already do. These routines—student question-generation, graphic organizers, two-column or Cornell notes, and summarization—become high-impact tools to help students engage in metacognition, deepen comprehension, and internalize thinking habits across disciplines.

The authors begin with a personal vignette: Nicole’s son in middle school using two-column notes and AI support while studying science, showing how routine practices can integrate across subjects. A conversation between colleagues about how to support student comprehension sparked this reflection: teachers are already burdened with new standards, heavy content, labs, assessments—and yet we still want students to think deeply. The trick is not to add more, but to make thinking visible via coherent, sustainable routines.

Comprehension = Making Meaning

Moriarty and Broderick define comprehension not merely as reading but as making meaning from what’s read, seen, and done. Crucially, students must also think about their thinking—metacognition. Two foundational levers support this: vocabulary and background knowledge. When students know most of the words on a page, they can link ideas; but knowing those words depends on knowledge (broad, cross-content), and using those words in speaking and writing strengthens that knowledge. Thus, the more a student knows, the more easily they can make sense of new content. This insight reinforces interdisciplinary, knowledge-rich curricula across grade levels.

The Four Core Routines

The authors posit that just four routines, used consistently, can transform comprehension:

1. Student-Generated Questions Let students ask their own questions as they read, observe, or work in labs. This ownership deepens engagement. Use familiar scaffolds like Bloom’s taxonomy, KWL charts, margin questioning, or the SQ4R method. The key: students generate questions during learning, not just after.

2. Graphic Organizers Visual maps help students see relationships among ideas. But avoid “organizer overload” (i.e. every class using a different format). Instead, pick one or two organizers (across department or school) and teach them deeply over time, so students internalize a consistent thinking framework.

3. Two-Column (Cornell) Notes Note writing is a thinking act. Students record “big ideas/questions” in one column and supporting details in the other, then add a summary. The act of translating, paraphrasing, and organizing strengthens comprehension and fosters metacognitive awareness. In this way, writing itself becomes thinking.

4. Summarization Summarization is a classic evidence-backed strategy. Students must select main ideas, consolidate details, and articulate meaning. The authors suggest low-stakes, frequent summarizing: the 20-word GIST, 12-word story, or Claim-Evidence-Reasoning structures. It’s fast, flexible, and applicable across content areas.

The authors emphasize that these routines should not be occasional add-ons but woven into regular instruction, across labs, readings, demonstrations, and lectures. Over time, students internalize these tools and can apply them independently to new contexts.

Why Especially Relevant in Secondary

By middle and high school, demands on comprehension increase sharply—dense texts, complex labs, multi-step tasks. Students who seemed adequate early on may struggle in these new terrain. Moriarty and Broderick note declines in NAEP scores at the 12th grade level and argue that an embedded, sustained approach to thinking routines can counteract this trend.

How to Begin

They recommend a gradual release model:

• I Do: Model the routine explicitly, thinking aloud through your own mind.

• We Do: Build it together with students—ask questions, scaffold, annotate.

• You Do Together: Students work in pairs or small groups to practice.

• You Do: Students independently use the routine in class work.

Importantly, the authors caution against wholesale curriculum overhauls or creating separate “thinking skills” courses. Instead, we should redeploy existing tasks—labs, texts, demonstrations—through the lens of these routines. Over time, students don’t just read better; they learn to think better.

In sum, Moriarty and Broderick invite educators to return to the timeless moves of thinking: question, organize, note, summarize—not as occasional strategies but as the engine of student cognition. This is not about adding more, but about upgrading how students engage with what’s already in front of them.

Original Article

“You Don’t Have to Add More to Teach Students How to Think: Upgrading Your Students’ Brain Engine,” Dr. Nicole Moriarty and Patricia Broderick, Beyond the Box 

https://beyondtheboxseries.substack.com/p/you-dont-have-to-add-more...

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software

OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT (4) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com