Monday, October 26, 2009
Week 10: Critical Thinking
I believe that critical thinking skills are very important to teach students, especially in early elementary grades. There are many skills that can be beneficial for students to begin practicing early on so that they become habitual, and therefore they have the potential to become great students. So far, I model critical thinking in the classes that I substitute for, since I don't yet have my own classroom. When there is an assignment, I often use subnotes in the teacher's textbook that allow for deeper thinking/critical thinking of a subject so that students can make connections as they learn. If students make these connections, they have a better chance of recalling the information and retaining the information later. If I did have my own class, I would need to learn the content from every angle, so that I could find teachable moments to have my students think about the content from every angle. In doing so, I believe that the students will better understand what they are learning. For the time being, as a substitute, finding teachable moments and/or incorporating critical thinkg involving the learning is more stimulating for me as well, since the day of a sub can become monotonous quickly. :)
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Good points, Nikki! I agree that you, as the teacher, really have to have a thorough understanding of the content before you can really encourage students to think critically. You're also right in that if students can successfully think critically about an area of content, then they have a much better understanding of the material! Great points! :)
ReplyDeleteNikki, I think you are doing a great job as a sub and you are right, often there are great guiding and prompting questions in the annotations that develop into group discussions and higher order thinking skills. A lot of times I would look there first and see how that could drive the lesson.
ReplyDeleteI can understand that it's probably difficult as a sub to find those teachable moments and help the kids with their critical thinking skills. I think it's great that you even think about it! Most of the subs I get like to sit back and read the paper while my kids do the work... of course it is different between elementary and high school, they may be able to get away with that at the high school level. I'm sure elementary students need more guidance/attention.
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