CRITICAL THINKING

The teaching of the explicit thinking skills incorporates critical and creative thinking strategies and problem solving methods.  As educators, we can establish a thinking classroom which promotes skills that enable students to become lifelong learners and thinkers.  The critical thinking mind analyzes, compares, judges, and evaluates.  The following outline, based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, is to be incorporated throughout the Language Arts Curriculum at all grade levels to develop students’ critical thinking skills.

I.                     Knowledge: The ability to recall, to bring to mind, the appropriate material including knowledge of terminology, classification, trends, criteria, methodology, generalizations, and structure.

·        Recognize and recall information

·        Making generalizations

·        Identify and define

·        Match and label

·        Use who, what, when, where, and why

II.                  Comprehension: The ability to know and use what is being communicated.

·        Explain and demonstrate

·        Group, reorganize, and rework information

·        Summarize and outline

III.               Application: The ability to use previous ideas in new situations.

·        Construct and put into action

·        Select and apply

·        Classify

·        Organize and put together

·        Experiment and solve

·        Model

IV.              Analysis: The ability to separate parts and see the relationships.

·        Compare/contrast

·        Classify/categorize

·        Search, sort, and analyze

·        Graph/chart

·        Survey

V.                 Synthesis:  The ability to create something new from previously acquired knowledge.

·        Imagine/create

·        Design/invent

·        Predict and develop

·        Rearrange/blend/compose

VI.              Evaluation: The ability to make judgments using determined or given criteria

·        Judge/justify

·        Conclude/evaluate

·        Assess/criticize

·        Verify/defend

·        Rate/recommend
 

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