Techniques for developing Critical Thinking

Techniques for Critical Thinking in Practice 

VISIBLE THINKING Sources: Adapted from Len Nixon – UTS Handouts – Autumn 2013 - Week 2  -  Visible Thinking,  Visible Thinking in Action
Blooms Taxonomy	REMEMBERING - UNDERSTANDING (LOWER ORDER THINKING SKILLS)	APPLYING - ANALYSING (MIDDLE ORDER THINKING SKILLS)	EVALUATING - CREATING (HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS)
Truth Routines	Stop Look Listen This routine helps students investigate truth claims and issues related to truth. It allows students to stand back and think about ways to obtain information when trying to find out about the truth of something	Claim-Support-Question This routine helps students develop thoughtful interpretation by encouraging them to reason with evidence. Students learn to identify truth claims and explore strategies for uncovering the truth.
	Hot Spots This spotting routine asks learners to spot “thinking hotspots” about the truth of a topic or situation that might be worth more attention	Truth for Who? This routine helps students cast a wide net for facts and arguments by imagining how an issue looks from different points of view
Fairness Routines	Circle of Viewpoints This routine helps students consider different and diverse perspectives involved in and around a topic	Reporter’s Notebook This routine is about distinguishing facts from thoughts and judgments. It helps organize ideas and feeling in order consider a situation where fairness may be at stake	Make it fair: Now, then, later This routine is about identifying and evaluating specific actions that might make a situation fair. This routine involves students in generating and evaluating options
	Here now / there then This routine encourages students to consider past perspectives and develop a better understanding of how thinking changes over time and across culture	Tug for Truth This routine encourages students to reason carefully about the ‘pull’ of various factors that are relevant to a question of truth. It helps them to appreciate the complexity of matters which may at first seem black and white
Understanding Routines	Connect/ Extend/ Challenge This routine helps students make connections between new ideas and prior knowledge	The Explanation Game This is a routine for understanding why something is the way it is. This routine can get at either causal explanation or explanation in terms of purposes or both	Headlines routine (Case Study) This routine helps students capture the core and heart of the matter being studied or discussed. It also can involve them in summing things up and upcoming to some tentative conclusion. [It constructs one’s own thinking]
	Think – Pair -  Share This routine encourages students to think about something, such as a problem, question or topic, and then articulate their thoughts
Core Routines	What makes you say that? This routine helps students describe what they see or know and asks them to build explanations. It promotes evidential reasoning (evidence-based reasoning) so that students can illustrate their knowledge and understanding	Think-Puzzle-Explore This routine activates prior knowledge, generate ideas and curiously and set the stage for deeper inquiry	I used to think …. But now I think This routine helps students reflect on their thinking about a topic or issue and explore HOW and WHY that thinking has changed
			Compass Points This routine helps students flesh out an idea or proposition and eventually evaluate it.
Creativity Routines	Creative Questions (Low, Mid or Higher order) This routine encourages students to create interesting questions and then imaginatively mess around with them for a while in order to explore their creative possibilities	Step Inside: Perceive-Know About – Care About This routine helps students explore different perspectives and viewpoints as they try to imagine things, events, problems, or issue differently	Does it fit? This routine helps students more effectively flesh out and evaluate options, alternatives, and choices in a decision-making situation
		Creative Hunt This routine makes thinking visible by helping students to find the creative thinking behind ordinary things	Options explosion This routine fosters creative thinking. It helps explore ‘hidden’ options indecision

Link to my Learning & Teaching Business Studies site

                 Learning blog 2

Geography Year 9 - Four Stages in the formation of Australia

Geography Year 9

The formation of Australia

Link: My Geography 9 lesson

Commerce Stage 5 - Option 6: Political Involvement - Pressure Groups

Year 10 Commerce - Pressure Groups

Leading questions: 1-What do we understand about Pressure Groups and Individuals? 2-What are their rights and responsibilities in the democratic process?

Today we will look at the role that pressure groups play in the democratic process and the role of the individual in the democratic process.

Where are we up to with this topic?

What do we understand about Pressure Groups?

What are pressure groups?

A pressure group is an organised group that seeks to influence government (public) policy or protect or advance a particular cause or interest.

-a group that tries to influence public policy in the interest of a particular cause, such as "an environmental pressure group"

Pressure groups are sometimes referred to as interest groups or lobbies. 

Examples of pressure groups are as below.

Strategies of pressure groups

 

Link: my commerce lesson page  

The Australian continent-the origins of the continent from a geographical perspective

Year 9 - Geography
Resource: Textbook Geography Focus 2, pp14-15

Link to My G9-Lesson 2
Useful resource from the NSW Education & training: Geography for those new to teaching the subject