Parent Suggestions

Expand discussions at home~ Hold discussions beyond academic topics. Conversations about everyday life topics such as local or world news are valuable to expose your teenager to as well.

Ask Questions~ Ask questions that have more than one correct answer (e.g., if you could design a new format for completing a lab, what would you do?) or require thinking in another way

Allow for error~ Give your adolescent time to provide pros and cons about a topic and ask them to evaluate their comments later (e.g., “What would you do differently next time?”)

Resources for Teachers

For Teacher

  • (article from Education Week Teacher)
  • ‘Hooked on Thinking’ by Ann Paziotopoulos and Marianne Kroll (article)
  • (The Critical Thinking Handbook: High School)



WHAT ARE CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS?

Critical thinking is crucial to language and literacy success. It compromises a set of skills targeting abilities beyond retention, understanding and use of literary elements and literal interpretation of information. This requires a student tothink about and reflect on ideas for the purposes of:

-Explaining why things happen

-Evaluating ideas

-Taking others perspectives

-Developing creative solutions

Areas of critical thinking

  1. Knowledge
  2. Comprehension
  3. Application
  4. Analysis
  5. Synthesis
  6. Evaluation

why focus on critical thinking?

  • Practice with thinking critically is linked to academic performance, makes students ready for college and provides them with skills needed for competing in the real world.
  • “The SAT assesses the student’s critical thinking skills” (bestcolleges.com, 2016)
  • “Critical thinking can be infused in lessons throughout all disciplines by utilizing in depth questioning and evaluation of both data and sources.” (McCollisterSayler, 2010).
  • The Common Core State Standards focus on critical thinking as a skill needed for students to be successful.
  • Reasoning and critical thinking are necessary skills for competence across the curriculum. They require students to examine, relate, and analyze all aspects of a problem or situation. Students engaged in critical thinking must make associations that connect problems with their prior knowledge (Pelligrini, 1995).

sTRATEGIES used by speech pathologists and can be used in the classroom

  • Elaboration–Encourage students to engage in elaboration and explanation of facts and ideas rather than repeating information verbatim. Teachers and parents could have the student explain what they learned as well as relate this new information to prior knowledge and experiences.
  • Collaborative Strategic Reading –
    (1) Preview (i.e., skim over the material, determine what they know and what they want to learn using a KWL chart
    (2) Identify clicks and clunks (clicks = we get it; clunks = we don't understand this concept, idea or word)
    (3) Get the gist (main idea)
    (4) Wrap up (summarize important ideas and generate questions (think of questions a teacher might ask on a test).

Graphic organizers– Students should develop the habit of noting and organizing all key concepts after completing a passage or chapter. Information on their graphic organizers may be used to aid the student’s comprehension and organize the student’s writing assignments.