Promoting Critical Thinking

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Promoting Critical Thinking

• By Myrtis Mixon

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Who Am I?

• Where am I from?
• What do I do there?
• About My family
• Why am I here?
• Who are you?

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What is Critical Thinking?

• Critical Thinking is an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY for
  the 21st century
• It makes one able to make decisions, evaluate,
  analyze, synthesize
• Thus to choose, to be a life-long learner!

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What is Critical Thinking?

• A distinct field of study
• Actively thinking about, engaging, and analyzing
  the topics you are learning about..

(handout)
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Critical Thinking

• As teachers, we always help students develop
  thinking skills, but in this new field, we ask
  students to focus on thinking itself, on the
  process of developing metacognitive skills

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Critical Thinking

• Adding Critical Thinking to your lessons will
  help motivate your students
• The first step in critical thinking is
  acknowledging/creating/declaring goals

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Goal Settingincreases student motivation

• What are your goals for this session?
• What are my goals?

(index cards)
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Critical Thinking

• Critical Thinking is being aware of thinking
• Its concentrating on the development of the
  higher orders of thinking and promoting that in
  our lessons.
• What are the higher orders?

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The Higher Orders

• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

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Creating Good Questions

• Good questions are a central skill of Critical
  Thinking
• (First use comprehension questions to be sure)
• Then, apply the Higher Orders
• Application Analysis Synthesis Evaluation

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New?

• The cognitive ( thinking) process
• and
• Strategies for improving the effectiveness of
  peoples reasoning abilities and critical
  attitudes

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Thinking can be developed

• It is improved by becoming aware of the process
• A good way to do this start with a short piece
  of writing
• Abuk
• African folktale

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Exploring the Story
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Exploring with CT

• Students summarize each paragraph in one sentence
• Students ask a question that would evoke that
  sentence
• These questions will indicate their comprehension
  of the material
• Tell them to avoid simple/factual questions

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Exploring with CT Exercises
Choosing Revising
Arranging Composing
Organizing Creating
Planning Chronology
Scanning Mind-mapping
Prediction
Making inferences
Making decisions
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Issues to explore

• Point of View
• Create questions about point of view
• How would this be different if it was written
• Through the eyes of Abuks father?
• Through the eyes of Abuks mother?

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Issues to explore

• Assumptions
• What are the assumptions in this story?
• What beliefs are taken for granted here?

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Issues to explore

• Inferences
• Making conclusions and inferences from writing
  listening is an important thinking skill,
  learning to go beyond the literal
• What inferences do you make
• about the young man? about Abuk?
• about the future happiness of the couple?

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Issues to explore

• Implications/Consequences
• Decisions cause implications and consequences.
• What will come out of this story?

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Issues to explore

• Concepts
• What are the concepts underlying this story?
• Theories
• Definitions
• Laws
• Models

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Four Important areas

• Four important areas for Critical Thinking
• Working toward goals
• Problem solving
• Decision making
• Analyzing issues

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Summary Writing
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Summary exercises on reading

• Summary- paragraph by paragraph
• Individual
• In Pairs
• Group Summary
• Three Sentence Summary

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Tips for summary writing

• Read the entire piece before summarizing
• List the main ideas (without looking back)
• Review for potentially missed things of
  importance
• Write a summary of the main ideas, using your own
  words.

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Tips for summarizing, cont.

• Write a clear statement of the main ideas as your
  first sentence
• Stick to the important information names, dates,
  places
• Avoid examples, description or adjectives - Leave
  out details
• Conclude with a sentence that ties all the point
  together

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Tips for summary writing

• Your summary should be no more than 1/3 as long
  as the original
• Do not make critical comments. Dont judge when
  you summarize

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Promoting Critical Thinking

• End of session

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Myrtis Mixon - Contact

• MYRTIS101_at_mac.com

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