Character Strength of Intellectual Humility – Instructional Activities and Strategies

The following are a few instructional strategies and activities to help integrate the strength of INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY into the culture of your classroom.

• Active/Attentive Listening – One way to help our students make emotional and social connections with each other is to help them learn how to listen with attention. Design a listening protocol based on the tenets of attentive listening that fits for the age of your students. Use this article and this one as a starting place with your design work to teach and embed active listening into the culture of your classroom. Look to integrate active listening into your Turn and Talk activities.

• I Used to Think… Now I Think… – Use this thinking routine to prompt students to reflect and share of ideas and thinking in which they realized that their thinking was incorrect. Use the mantra of “seek to understand” as you guide students to question their thinking to better understand multiple perspectives.

• Talk Moves –  Here are some sample questions and a video that one can use to help students ask each other questions to go deeper in their understanding when speaking with others.

  • What made you think that?

  • How did you get that answer?

  • Is it possible there is another way to think about …?

  • Is it possible that what you know about … might be incorrect?

  • Why is that important?

  • What do mean by …?

  • What is your evidence?

  • How do you know that?

  • So you are saying …?

  • Can you say more about …?

Photo by Kyle Johnson on Unsplash