124 Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind
Building “Mindful” Language
Once the language for naming the Habits of Mind has been expanded,
the next step is to use language tools and strategies intentionally to
enhance students’ awareness and performance of these intelligent behav-
iors. Following are several ways to encourage the habits through specific,
mindful use of language (Costa & Marzano, 2001).
Thinking Words
We o f t e n h e a r t e a c h e r s a d m o ni s h s t u d e n t s t o t h i n k : “ T h i n k h a r d! ”
Students sometimes are criticized for not having the inclination to think:
“These kids just go off without thinking!” Actually, the term thinkis a
vague abstraction covering a wide range of mental activities. Thus, stu-
dents may not appear to think because
•The vocabulary is a foreign language to them.
•They may not know how to perform the specific skills that the term
implies.
When adults speak mindful language, using specific, cognitive ter-
minology and instructing students in ways to perform certain skills, stu-
dents are more inclined to use those skills (Astington & Olson, 1990;
Langer, 1997). Consider the following examples:
Instead of saying... Use mindful languageby saying...
“Let’s look at these two “Let’s COMPARE these two
pictures.” pictures.”
“What do you think will “What do you PREDICT will
happen when... ?” happen when... ?”
“How can you put those into “How can you CLASSIFY... ?”
groups?”
“Let’s work this problem.” “Let’s ANALYZE this problem.”
“What do you think would “What do you SPECULATE
have happened if... ?” would have happened if... ?”