How to Build Thinking Skills
Helping students build critical thinking skills is an important task for every teacher. Students who learn how to analyze difficult concepts and think logically will score well on standardized tests and will perform better in advanced classes. Student-centered lessons that escape the classic format of passive learning and allow students to participate in learning are essential to building critical thinking skills. Teachers who use projects such as speeches, debates, persuasive writing, and analysis of world issues will help students develop the skill of forming opinions and thinking and communication skills.
- Difficulty:
- Moderate
Instructions
Things You'll Need
- News articles
- Internet access
- Subscriptions to newspapers and magazines
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1
Hold class discussions about news articles several times a week. Keeping abreast of world events helps students form opinions, think through tough issues and learn how a room full of students may have wildly divergent opinions on the same events. Reading news articles helps students build thinking skills and increases their vocabulary as well.
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2
Use the Internet often to research topics for class projects. The Internet offers news sites such as CNN and MSNBC to help students read about world issues. As students read the news, it becomes easier for them to use thinking skills to form opinions about topics such as global warming, politics and elections.
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3
Assign persuasive writing topics. Have students vary between working in groups and working on their own. Persuasive writing helps students practice critical thinking, analysis and logic skills. When presenting their opinion on a controversial topic and trying to persuade the reader to join them in this opinion, students are forced to carefully think through key facts and build a coherent argument to support their opinion.
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4
Assign monthly speech projects. Researching a topic for a speech helps students analyze the facts they find to ensure that they are logical and appropriate for use in a speech. Circulate the room as they are researching to discuss their fact-finding with them and help them find a focus for their speech. Then, presenting a speech to the class helps students build confidence in their thinking skills; hearing the feedback from their peers after the speech lets them know the research and thinking they did to prepare for the speech was useful.
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5
Hold occasional class debates on world issues. Students will bond during this experience, and they will work together and build thinking skills by talking through opinions and facts about the issue. Debates force a class to use those skills to find a way to present information to sway the class to their side.
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Tips & Warnings
Have a share library in the classroom to encourage reading and to build critical thinking skills. Encourage ongoing classroom use of computers for research. Subscribe to newspapers and magazines such as Teen Newsweek so students always have fresh reading material.
Keep abreast of world issues. Once students start to build their critical thinking skills, they do ask a lot more questions in class!
