Special+Ed

Critical Thinking Look Fors 1. Group work 2. Open ended questions 3. Projects vs. paper pencil activities

Students are not being encourged to think constructively due to the constraints of the SOL assessments. Children start school curious, interested, and ready to learn, but our current teaching styles squelch this natural curiosity. Teachers need to find a way to teach tested concepts in a way that involves more higher level thinking skills. Students not only need to know the information for the test, but their curiosity needs to be sparked in order for knowledge to be fully constructed. If a student has no interest in the material, and no anchor to prior knowledge, no real learning takes place. They may pass the test, but it will mean nothing in the long run and we will all be behind the curve.

[|slgunter] I believe critical thinking is an important step in becoming a successful adult.We need to start teaching in a way that lends to better critical thinking skills in our schools. This will be a challenge for some special ed. students as they don't have some of the basic content knowldege that is neccessary to then think critically about the topic as they have trouble sequencing and storing information. It won't happen over night and it will take a lot of practice, but I'm willing to try. PS. I agree with Ms. James. We will need a lot of support from the school system if we are going to succeed in this new 21st century challenge.

Post your grade level's responses here. jlschmid: I absolutely agree that critical thinking skills is what gets us ahead in the workplace and that we should start expecting more of this of our students. What I couldn't help thinking as I read the article was how many adults I know that don't use critical thinking skills on a daily basis! If we don't use them ourselves, how are we supposed to teach and expect our students to be critical thinkers?

jsmacalu: Okay! I am trying this again! I do not know where my last message went. I agree that students need background knowledge to be critical thinkers. As teachers, I feel that it is important to relate information to the students as much as possible, to model questioning skills, and to provide practice and cues to enable students to think critically as stated in the article. I found it interesting that the author stated that, "People can engage in some types of critical thinking without training, but even with extensive training, they will sometimes fail to think critically."

jdstanfo: Here, here Mrs. James! I agree with you whole-heartedly! What I gleaned from this article was that not only is critical thinking difficult to teach, it relies heavily on background knowledge. The life experiences of our students are incredibly important to developing their critical thinking skills. When students lack background knowledge it puts teachers in a very difficult situation. We are already stretched for time to include all aspects of the curriculum and are hard pressed to build the background that students need. Students also need to be exposed to problems repeatedly in order to recognize the deep structure of the problem. Students need to be exposed to ANY information repeatedly in order to master it, so I'm not sure how teaching critical thinking skills is that much different than teaching anything else! The more I think about it, it seems that critical thinking comes with experience. I believe that children have more difficulty thinking critically because they have fewer experiences, it's much easier for adults to think critically because of their wealth of experience. Hopefully we will all be full fledged critical thinkers by the time we are 80!

satucker1 I found it frustrating to read that although critical thinking has been a focus in education for 20 years, according to the author, there has been limited progress. Even programs that are geared specifically to that end demonstrate only modest gains, so our frustration in the classroom setting appears justified. I agreed with the author's definition for critical thinking and the three integral elements that impact its success. I find that our special ed students have a very difficult time recognizing that there is more than the surface structure and many lack the general fund of information needed for successful critical thinking.

I agree with the author that critical thinking is definitely not a skill. However, I don't believe it is my responsibility as a teacher to raise my students. I can only give them so much background knowledge in the classroom, WE NEED HELP FROM HOME. [|jsmacalu] Accountable talk takes patience, restraint, and a focused effort. Teachers need to model proper questioning techniqes and hold accountable group discussions. When these techniques are mastered in a group setting, they can then carry them over to small group discussions, peer/peer interviews, and peer/teacher interviews. By practicing accountable talk classroom noise will not just be chatter, but productive learning.
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