Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Critical Thinking: To what extent do you teach, model, and have students engage in critical thinking. . .
I feel critical thinking is crucial in the classroom. Students will connect more to the content if they must use critical thinking skills. Also, these skills are so important in the real world, and our students will learn and retain more information this way. I try to foster critical thinking as much as I can in my class. Instead of just having students practice for the Reading CRCT, I have them create Thinking Maps around the text they are reading. Thinking Maps are awesome for critical thinking in all content areas. There are 8 of them for each thought process we have. They require students to create a graphic organizer of the information, connect to it, and consider how they know what they know. Technology is also a great way to encourage critical thinking, as we are learning in this course. All of the web 2.0 applications are awesome ways for the students to take their information and find a way to apply it authentically. I am learning a great deal in this class. I am constantly thinking about what all I could do if I had access to a computer for each student each day. We don't even have a computer lab at my school, just about 10 or 15 computers in the media center that you CAN sign up for, but considering there are around 700 kids at our school-not a very promising resource. We do have three tech labs but they are used solely for those three classes, not accessible by other classes. It's sad really, the lack of technology in the schools. Still, Thinking Maps and that sort of tool do not require technology, so critical thinking skills are not dependent on technolgy but could be greatly enhanced by technology if the resources are available.
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2 comments:
Critical thinking is very important to have your students be engaged in in the classroom. Thinking maps are great for critical thinking skills along with many different types of graphic organizers. I found a ton of graphic organizers for social studies last year which were great for my students because the content was very difficult for them to understand. I understand the technology issue. It is a great tool to use and to use for critical thinking if it is available. It was very difficult for me last year to just to get an open lab time for my students to go in a use it. I learned there are many other activities that you can use in your classroom to have the students up and moving and "thinking outside the box"
Thinking maps are really cool! I think it's awesome that you're taking a step further in your reading class rather than just doing worksheets like other teachers. It's so important that students are not only engaged but really thinking at a higher level. Using technology has been a bit tricky for me in the critical hinking realm as well, but I think the more resources we find, the better equipped we will b to use the two together.
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