Develop 21st Century Critical Thinking Skills

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Develop 21st Century Critical Thinking
Skills With Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center
Critical Thinking
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What is Critical Thinking?

• Problem solving
• Thinking outside the box
• Teaching kids to think for themselves
• The ability to analyze and understand
• Forming ones own opinion
• Knowing how to make decisions
• Defining what you want to know or find

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18 Critical Thinking Skills

• Locating Credible, Relevant Information

Comprehending Information

• Clarifying issues, conclusions, or beliefs
  Explain ideas and statements to make them
  clearer.
• Developing criteria for evaluation clarifying
  values and standardsIdentify factors that are
  used to make decisions and judgments.
• Analyzing arguments, interpretations, beliefs, or
  theoriesExamine and investigate ideas in greater
  detail.
• Identifying assumptionsRecognize ideas, beliefs,
  and theories that are not stated by an author.
• Recognize ideas, beliefs, and theories that are
  not stated by an author.Making plausible
  inferences, predictions, or interpretationsProvid
  e a reasonable explanation, forecast, or
  conclusion from information.

• Evaluating the credibility of information
  sourcesFind sources of information that can be
  relied on to be accurate, trustworthy, and
  authoritative.
• Distinguishing relevant from irrelevant
  factsExamine sources of information to
  determine their usefulness for a specific
  question or topic.
• Distinguishing fact from opinionEvaluate a
  statement to determine if the statement is a
  personal judgment.
• Recognizing contradictions Identify conclusions
  that are inconsistent or disagree with cited
  facts and events
• Recognizing bias Identify unfair preferences,
  prejudices, prejudgments, or dislikes.

Evaluating Sources of Information
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18 Critical Thinking Skills

• Analyzing Information
• 11. Analyzing or evaluating actions or policies
• Examine the consequence of an undertaking or
  plan in great detail.
• 12. Comparing analogous situations transferring
  insights to new contexts
• Recognize the similarity between two events use
  knowledge of one event to understand another
  event.
• 13. Recognizing cause and effect
• Identify how one event makes another event
  happen.
• .

• Synthesizing and Applying Information
• 14. Demonstrating reasoned judgment
• Show that an opinion or conclusion is based on
  evidence and logic.
• 15. Identifying alternatives
• List different possible conclusions, courses or
  action, or beliefs to choose between.
• 16. Exploring implications and consequences
• Identify the possible effects of different
  courses of action.
• 17. Generating or assessing solutions
• Develop answers and explanations for problems.
• 18. Drawing and testing conclusions
• Reconsider a decision based on an analysis of
  its effects and consequences

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Blooms Taxonomy
Evaluation Putting elements together to form a
coherent or functional whole
Application  Carrying out or using a procedure
through executing, or implementing
Synthesis  Making judgments based on criteria
and standards through checking and critiquing. 
Comprehension  Constructing meaning from oral,
written, and graphic messages
Knowledge Retrieving, recognizing, and
recalling relevant knowledge from long-term
memory  
Analysis  Breaking material into parts,
determining how the parts relate to one another
and to an overall structure or purpose
Source http//www.coe.uga.edu/epltt/bloom.htm
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Why are Critical Thinking Skills Important?

• So kids become independent, lifelong learners
• Its how kids develop problem-solving skills
• This is more of a challenge now, ironically,
  with kids having answers readily available at
  their fingertips.

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Critical Thinking In The News

• "How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th
  Century, Time, Dec 18, 2006
• The workforce readiness crisis we're not
  turning out employable graduates nor maintaining
  our position as a global competitor.
  Why? Technology Learning, Nov 2006 
• Leaders for high school reform school leaders
  must be involved in reforming our high schools so
  they can help all students become productive
  adults who are equipped with 21st century
  skills, Leadership, May-June 2006

Articles found in General Reference Center Gold
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How do teachers encourage development of these
skills?

• Integrate open-response or essay questions into
  instruction.
• Encourage students to consider the broadest range
  of possibilities
• Encourage individual reflection on learning
• What did you learn?
• Was this important to you? Why/why not
• Stimulate opinion development
• Do you agree or disagree? Why/why not?
• Engage students in an in-class debate
• Challenge opinions in a respectful,
  thought-provoking fashion

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The Challenges in Teaching Critical Thinking

• Regarded as highly important and tested on most
  high-stakes exams
• Teachers struggle to find the time to integrate
  such an approach AND cover all content area
  objectives required in the state standards.
• The approach required to develop critical
  thinking skills is time-consuming and often
  difficult for teachers. New teachers may lack
  appropriate training to cultivate these skills.

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Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center Critical
Thinking

• Encourages students to interact with, argue about
  and analyze issues and concepts, encouraging the
  next step of learning beyond rote memorization.
• Promotes the development of 21st century skills
  (information and communication skills, thinking
  and problem-solving skills, etc).
• Develops media literacy in distinguishing between
  reliable and unreliable information and assisting
  students in knowing how to manage, interpret,
  validate and act on information.

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Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center Subscribers

• The interactive features of OVRC Critical
  Thinking engage students and teachers in learning
  and research while promoting the development of
  21st century skills. OVRC Critical Thinking
  benefits the whole school by increasing usage of
  library resources through a natural collaboration
  among classroom teachers and school librarians.
• OVRC Critical Thinking
• Provides leveled materials that meet the
  differentiated needs of various learners
• Meets the needs of all students (including
  special needs students) with various learning
  modalities and special features, such as MP3
  audio files
• Empowers teachers and librarians with a rich
  arsenal of 750 short assessments on 250 topics.
• Saves valuable time for the teaching staff with
  inquiry-based lessons, hand-selected content on
  the most taught topics that are
  standards-aligned, integrate extension
  activities, and provide formative assessment to
  gauge student progress.
• Critical Thinking makes a great product even
  better!

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Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center Critical
Thinking

• Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center Critical
  Thinking is a dynamic, online library of current
  event topics, featuring
• the facts
• the arguments
• the pros
• the cons
• references to support each perspective
• Based on the acclaimed Opposing Viewpoints series
  by Greenhaven Press, Opposing Viewpoints Resource
  Center Critical Thinking delivers a safe and
  reliable Internet resource in which to find
• balanced
• unbiased
• authoritative content
• statistics and government data placed in context,
  
• core reference content from multiple credible
  sources
• on the issues that intrigue students most.

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Interactive Features of Opposing Viewpoints
Resource Center Critical Thinking

• The interactive features of OVRC Critical
  Thinking engage students and teachers in learning
  and research while promoting the development of
  21st century skills.
• OVRC Critical Thinking benefits the whole school
  by increasing usage of library resources through
  a natural collaboration among classroom teachers
  and school librarians.
• OVRC Critical Thinking
• Provides leveled materials that meet the
  differentiated needs of various learners
• Meets the needs of all students (including
  special needs students) with various learning
  modalities and special features, such as MP3
  audio files
• Empowers teachers and librarians with a rich
  arsenal of 750 short assessments on 250 topics.
• Saves valuable time for the teaching staff with
  inquiry-based lessons that are standards-aligned,
  integrate extension activities, and provide
  formative assessment to gauge student progress.

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Features and Benefits Assessment

• Features
• Available offline and online
• Multiple choice and open-response questions
• Online grading of multiple choice assessment
  questions
• Individual student reflection upon completion
• Benefits
• Teachers can quickly check individual student
  AND classroom comprehension and application of
  critical thinking skills
• The student can self-check their work
• Offline availability accommodates learning
  environments where there arent enough computers
  for each student
• Online availability enables students to work from
  any Internet connection and increases student
  engagement
• Online assessment and grading provides student
  with immediate feedback on performance and areas
  for improvement

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Features and Benefits Interactive Audio

• Features
• Vocabulary in context
• Audible articles and key vocabulary terms
• Articles downloadable in MP3 format
• Benefits
• Helps students develop better communication
  skills increases vocabulary
• Meets different learning modalities This is an
  auditory generation. Audio gives all students
  one more avenue to understand subject matter.
• Many students will likely listen to an article
  before they read it. Audio is motivating for
  many kids.
• Application with special needs populations
  (English language learners, auditory processing
  delay, etc)
• Anticipate universal appeal among students

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Features and Benefits Teachers Guide

• Features
• Blackline masters that are 3-hole drilled with
  perforated pages
• Includes lesson plans and a final lesson
  assessment (with answer key!)
• Each lesson is aligned to a specific critical
  thinking skill area
• Consistent format for lessons and activities
• Benefits
• Saves teachers time with pre-packaged,
  standards-aligned lessons and assessment
• Easily reproducible among educators
• Continuity in the presentation of lesson
  components makes it easy for teachers to move
  from lesson to lesson.

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Instructional Strategies

• As a tool for vocabulary development
• A starting point for discussing social issues or
  current events
• Support for expository writing, such as pro/con
  papers
• Integrate leveled articles and assessment into
  required daily reading practice
• Practice summarizing, inferences, cause/effect
  all skills that are tested on the high stakes
  exam.
• Out-of-the-box solution for less tech-savvy
  teachers that need to integrate technology in
  their lessons
• Preparation for debate and extemporaneous speech
  activities

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What educators are saying about Critical Thinking

• Excellent! This is much more than just a
  research tool!
• Provides teachers with high-quality research
  activities using high-quality, authoritative
  resources.
• Encourages high level critical thinking and
  promotes independent learning.
• It is an easy way for teachers to give
  assignments that go beyond memorization and
  toward critical thinking skills.
• I like OVRC already and now adding the rest of
  what the Critical Thinking has to offer reading
  of the article, the tests, teacher resources,
  easily identified critical thinking skills its
  even better!