The 12 Characteristics of A Critical Thinker Teachers Should Be Aware of

September 6, 2014
We all want our students to be critical thinkers but when it comes to defining what it is that critical thinking is all about and what strategies to use to cultivate it in classroom things get a little bit muddier.Scholars across various disciplines define it differently. For Daniel Willingham critical thinking is "seeing both sides of an issue", Robert Wessberg views it as " an ability to use reason to move beyond the acquisition of facts to uncover deep meaning" and linda Elder sees it as a "self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way". At its essence, critical thinking does require an elevated form of reasoning that is not usually found in other forms of thinking and for teachers to raise critical thinkers  they definitely need to be well versed with the inner workings of this type of thinking. To this end, Edtech and Mlearning has this resourceful section full of materials and resources to help teachers integrate the ethos of critical thinking in their instructional pedagogy.

Image source: http://goo.gl/ML0Xqd

In today's post I am adding another important resource which I have recently uncovered .Critical Thinking.Net is a website that provides some useful materials on critical thinking. Using this website you will be able to find answers to the following questions:

• What is critical thinking ?
• Why teach it?
• How can critical thinking be taught?
• How can critical thinking be assessed?

The site also features another page which includes some interesting articles about critical thinking. Going through these  resources  I came across this definition of what a critical thinker is in the eyes of Robert H. Enis. For Robert a critical thiner:

1. Is open-minded and mindful of alternatives
2. Desires to be, and is, well-informed
3. Judges well the credibility of sources
4. Identifies reasons, assumptions, and conclusions
5. Asks appropriate clarifying questions
6. Judges well the quality of an argument, including its reasons, assumptions, evidence, and their degree of support for the conclusion
7. Can well develop and defend a reasonable position regarding a belief or an action, doing justice to challenges
8. Formulates plausible hypotheses
9. Plans and conducts experiments well
10. Defines terms in a way appropriate for the context
11. Draws conclusions when warranted – but with caution
12. Integrates all of the above aspects of critical thinking

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24 Questions to Enhance Students Reflective and Critical Thinking Skills

August 31, 2014
Reflection is a fundamental skill from which is branched out all other thinking skills. Reflection is a form of meta-thinking, a process of deep contemplation and pondering. It is also the basis of critical thinking for we can not raise critical thinkers if we do not have good 'reflectors'. When students are taught the art of reflecting, they become independent learners who are engaged in a constant process of assessment and re-assessment of their learning needs and strategies.

Reflection is all about questioning. To cultivate a reflective culture within your class, students need to be encouraged to pose challenging questions as to the way they learn and think. They need to be able to track the inner thinking process that lead them to the answers they come up with. There are a variety of questions to use with students in this regard. Some of these questions are captured in this beautiful visual below. Teachheath, who created this visual, divided these questions into 4 main headings: accuracy questions, understanding questions, clarity questions, and giving clarity questions. Go through the visual and explore the different questions featured there. This is indeed a great back-to-school resource to add to your teaching toolkit. Enjoy

Source of the graphic: http://goo.gl/72q0vH

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Tons of Resources for Teaching Critical Thinking to Your Students

August 28, 2014
Somebody asked me today about resources for teaching critical thinking to students.The first thing that comes to my mind is Cybraryman's wonderful platform where he collects and shares educational websites and links.His Critical Thinking page features a wide variety of resources on problem-based learning and critical thinking. You might want to bookmark his page and keep checking on it as it is a work in progress and he keeps adding more stuff to it. Some of the things you will find in this page are video resources on critical thinking, guides and tutorials, rubrics, iPad apps for teaching critical thinking and many more.

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Two Great Classroom Posters on The Six Thinking Hats

July 17, 2014
The Six Thinking Hats is a book written by Edward de Bono in which he lays out a practical method that expands on the very simple concept of thinking. Since its publication a decade ago, several teachers and educators worldwide have adopted Edward's thinking approach with success. The Six Thinking Hats can be used with students in class to enhance their thinking and decision making skills.

Image source: http://goo.gl/ZUgsdu

 For De Bono intelligence is the potential of the human brain and thinking is the skill to  tap into this potential. In order for kids and students to better benefit from the potential of their brains, they need to be taught the skill of thinking. To this end, De Bono puts forward this uniquely positive approach to unscramble the thinking process:

• White hat: neutral and objective, concerned with facts and figures 
• Read hat: the emotional view 
• Black hat:  careful and cautious, the "devil's advocate" hat 
• Yellow hat: sunny and positive
• Green hat: associated with fertile growth, creativity, and new ideas
• Blue hat:   the color of the sky, above everything else.

One of the important aspects of De Bono's work is the use of the power of colour as a way to help move our thinking and therefore influence behaviour.

If you haven't  yet read Six Thinking Hats then you should definitely do so before the start of the new school year. It has loads of insightful knowledge to help you enhance your students thinking skills.

To bring you close to the concept of the Six Thinking Hats, I am sharing with you these two awesome posters to use in class:

1- I learned about this graphic from Liza

2-

Source: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/410038741046411806/

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A Great Guide to Developing Critical Thinking through Web Research Skills eBook

July 9, 2014
Developing Critical Thinking through Web Research Skills is a free PDF eBook from Microsoft for teachers and educators.This short 37 pages ebook provides a wide range of ideas for teaching web search skills and critical thinking in all grades (k-12). It also features different resources to introduce teachers to the concept of critical thinking and provides them with practical guides on how they can go about incorporating critical thinking skill in their instruction.

I came across this wonderful eBook through a resourceful list containing more than 300 free eBooks provided by Microsoft. This eBook as well all the other eBooks featured in that list are free to download. You don't need to sign up or register to download them.

Here is a quick look into the table of content of Developing Critical Thinking through Web Research Skills:

•  Literacy and Critical Thinking in the Digital Age 
•  A New Set of Skills: Essential Web Research Skills 
•  Ideas for Teaching Web Research Skills and Critical Thinking in Grades K–12 
•  Resources 
•  Conclusion 

Developing Critical Thinking through Web Research Skills eBook is available for download from this link. Enjoy

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The 5 Step Model to Teach Students Critical Thinking Skills

May 11, 2014
One of our priorities as teachers and educators is to cultivate a culture of critical thinking within our classrooms. Such an endeavour ,while possible and doable, does take so much planning and efforts. I am talking here about efforts from both teachers and students, and on a larger scale curriculum designers as well.

Critical thinking is a cognitive skill that can be developed through a well-planned instructional process. This process, according to Duran et al. (2006) requires five fundamental steps:

Related: Teacher Resources for Teaching Critical Thinking

1- Determine learning objectives
This is the initial phase where you need to identify the behaviours you want your students to exhibit and work on encapsulating these behaviours in an overarching higher order thinking schema.

2-Teach through questioning
The importance of integrating questions into instruction is uncontested. Thought-provoking questions help students explore learning from different perspectives. The art of posing well-formulated questions is regaled by a set of techniques, some of which are included in this wonderful poster: Questions A Critical Thinker Asks.

3-Practice before you assess
This is where hands-on learning activities are called for. To consolidate their understandings and therefore increase the retention rate of information taught, students need to utilize all components of active learning such as simulation, experimentations,rehearsing...etc

Related: The 8 Elements of The Critical Thinking Process

4- Review, refine, and improve
Students' feedback that you can garner either formally or informally constitute the backbone of your teaching procedure. It provides you with insights into areas that students need help with and also informs your teaching objectives and methodology. There are a variety of tools you can use to collect feedback from your students, check out the  8 Practical tools to easily gather students feedback.


5- Provide feedback and assessment of learning
As you need students feedback to help you inform your teaching methodology, students too  need your feedback. They need to learn how they are learning and assess their overall achievement. One way to do this is to provide them with grading rubrics for self-assessment. Here are some other resources to help you provide better feedback to your students:

• 7 Important Tips for providing effective feedback to students.
• 20 Ways to provide feedback to your students.

Here is the visual version of this model as theorized by Duran et al . (2006).

 Thanks to Teachthought where I learned about this visual.

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A Great Poster on The 6 Questions Critical Thinker Asks

April 6, 2014
In an earlier post here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning I talked about the 8 elements of the critical thinking process and I argued that critical thinking is  a cognitive process that requires disruptive patterns of thinking, ones that question the status quo of propositions and leads to the creation of alternative lines of reasoning.

Today I am adding to this discussion this beautiful visual created by Learningcommons which features the 6 questions a critical thinker asks. This could be used as a poster in your classroom to remind students of the kind of questions they need to ponder about and develop. Have a look and share with your colleagues.

For more resources, toolkits, sheets and other materials on critical thinking, visit this page.

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