Keeping Gifted Kids Engaged: Teaching Critical Thinking
Welcome to the third blog in the Keeping Gifted Students Engaged at the End of the Year blog series!! The topic of this blog is: Teaching Critical Thinking.
If you have missed the last two blogs in the series, I spoke heavily on the reason many gifted kids are disengaged or begin to have behaviors at the end of the year: REVIEW. I highly suggest going back and reading Projects and Real World Application (Blog #1) or Adding Creativity (Blog #2) if you missed that!
The problem with critical thinking in classrooms today.
Critical Thinking is hot phrase in education right now. “We must help our students think critically!” Or “make sure to add critical thinking to your lesson plans!” Or my favorite, “critical thinking is a 21st century skill!”
While I agree with all of these statements, I somehow rarely see it implemented in the classroom – ESPECIALLY EXPLICITLY.
Sure, teachers may make the lesson a bit more challenging to differentiate for some. Or maybe they are adding some open ended questions. My favorite – giving students harder numbers in math and calling that “critical thinking”.
As we explore what critical thinking ACTUALLY looks like in a classroom, I want you to analyze your own teaching practices with a magnifying glass. When you do ACTUALLY implement critical thinking, or explicitly teach critical thinking. I promise you, before I became a gifted teacher, I rarely did any of the above. Not for a lack of desire, but rather a lack of true understanding.
So what DOES critical thinking look like?
Critical thinking is a great skill to incorporate throughout the year, but the reason I have it as part of this blog series is because as students are wrapping up exploring all standards, this is the PERFECT time for them to be thinking critically about all topics/standards.
In this incredible article (linked here) created by the Colorado Department of Education, they outline different types of critical thinking. Surely there are more, but this list is a GREAT place to start if you have not yet explicitly taught any of these skills.
CDE Article “Success Stories” Page 62
What I have noticed as I look through these different critical thinking skills, is that some are very readily intertwined into standards. For example: identifying fact and opinion, determining reality and fantasy, identifying missing information, etc.
BUT, other skills on this list such as inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, judgement, arguments, etc. are not skills that are typically explicitly taught. THESE are the skills that I believe we need to focus on adding into our teaching practices. Today, I want to explore how we can use these skills to continue to develop our gifted students (and all students!) critical thinking and engagement at the end of the year.
Implementing critical thinking into your classroom
When I think about implementing these skills, the BEST way to do it is by intertwining them into the activities, projects, and lessons your kids are already doing. The best bang for your buck comes during planning. I promise you, if you print this chart out and add one skill to a unit or lesson, your students will begin to think critically independently.
BUT, if your students do not know these skills yet (i.e. they have no idea what deductive reasoning is), you can not just start putting them into your lessons. Your students will be confused, frustrated, and rarely think critically.
These skills need to be explicitly taught. Teaching students WHAT and HOW to think deductively is the first step! These do not have to be long or intricate lessons, but spending the time to practice the skill in a non-academic way will increase your students success. Then, once you start adding these critical thinking skills to your daily lessons and standards, it will be a fun and engaging way for your students to think deeper.
Explicitly teaching critical thinking skills
There are many ways to begin to teach these skills EXPLICITLY if you have not already. But, there are a few ways I suggest:
1. Critical Thinking Boot Camp
A super fun way to teach these skills is in a week long boot camp. Depending on the age of your students, you could do one skill a day (maybe every 2 days), or a skill a week. Think about at the beginning of the year if you spent just one week teaching a few critical thinking skills, how easy it would be to continue to use them throughout the year.
OR at the end of the year, as you are wrapping things up (maybe even state testing) and you are looking for fun things to do that aren’t as standards driven and more thinking driven, you could spend some time teaching different critical thinking skills.
2. Critical Thinking Warm Ups
A great way to incorporate consistent exposure to explicitly practice these skills is through warm ups and daily challenges. This was one of my favorite ways to remind kids of the skills, how to use them, and have fun while practicing them outside of standards (then, of course, we would practice them with our academic material as well.)
Check out these daily practice slides I made for 4 different critical thinking skills: Convergent, Divergent, Judgement, and Visual Spatial.
Here is a sneak peak at some of the daily warm-up challenges:
**Email subscribers – you have received one of the PPTs as a freebie! Make sure to check your email and download it! Join my email list here to get future freebies!!
3. Critical Thinking Curriculum
When I began as a K-2 GT teacher, one of my favorite things to do was teach explicit critical thinking lessons to entire K-2 classes. I used a curriculum called Primary Education Thinking Skills (PETS). This is offered for grades K-3. You can find the curriculum on Amazon as well!
After a year of teaching the lessons, I began to convert the lessons into my own units and alter them to begin to add more academic content. But, I suggest starting with a curriculum as it is a great way to familiarize yourself with the different critical thinking skills, how they are implemented, behaviors kids show when they are strong in certain areas, and games to play. I have not yet found a curriculum for grades 4-5, but I do believe if you looked at the lower grade PETS curriculums, you could easily adapt the activities and the kids would still love them!
THANK YOU
Thank you for joining me through this series: Keeping Gifted Kids Engaged at the end of the Year! Check out the other blog posts in the series if you missed any, and make sure to subscribe to my email list to be notified of new posts and receive all the freebies! Questions, comments or concerns? Find me on instagram @giftedwithgoldens or email me [email protected] !
Keeping Gifted Kids Engaged Series:
Blog #1: Projects and Real World Application
Blog #2: Adding Creativity
