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Promoting Critical Thinking . By Myrtis Mixon. Who Am I?. Where am I from? What do I do there? About My family Why am I here? Who are you?. What is Critical Thinking?. Critical Thinking is an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY for the 21 st century
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Promoting Critical Thinking By Myrtis Mixon
Who Am I? • Where am I from? • What do I do there? • About My family • Why am I here? • Who are you?
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!
What is Critical Thinking? • A distinct field of study • Actively thinking about, engaging, and analyzing the topics you are learning about.. (handout)
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
Critical Thinking • Adding Critical Thinking to your lessons will help motivate your students • The first step in critical thinking is acknowledging/creating/declaring goals
Goal Settingincreases student motivation • What are your goals for this session? • What are my goals? (index cards)
Critical Thinking • Critical Thinking is being aware of thinking • It’s concentrating on the development of the higher orders of thinking and promoting that in our lessons. • What are the higher orders?
The Higher Orders • Application • Analysis • Synthesis • Evaluation
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
New? • The cognitive ( thinking) process and • Strategies for improving the effectiveness of people’s reasoning abilities and critical attitudes
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
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
Exploring with CT Exercises Choosing Revising Arranging Composing Organizing Creating Planning Chronology Scanning Mind-mapping Prediction Making inferences Making decisions
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 Abuk’s father? Through the eyes of Abuk’s mother?
Issues to explore Assumptions: • What are the assumptions in this story? • What beliefs are taken for granted here?
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?
Issues to explore • Implications/Consequences • Decisions cause implications and consequences. • What will come out of this story?
Issues to explore Concepts: What are the concepts underlying this story? • Theories • Definitions • Laws • Models
Four Important areas: Four important areas for Critical Thinking • Working toward goals • Problem solving • Decision making • Analyzing issues
Summary exercises on reading • Summary- paragraph by paragraph • Individual • In Pairs • Group Summary • Three Sentence Summary
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.
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
Tips for summary writing • Your summary should be no more than 1/3 as long as the original • Do not make critical comments. Don’t judge when you summarize
Promoting Critical Thinking End of session
Myrtis Mixon - Contact MYRTIS101@mac.com