Teaching critical thinking skills pdf

Results of the study Results were ordered according to the questions of the study. Responding to the item, "My students distinguish credible from non-credible sources of information" The item "They can listen attentively to others and provide them with appropriate feedback" has a My students have a strong intention to recognize the importance of good 2.

My students can identify problems and focus on relevant topics and issues. They can distinguish between valid and invalid inferences 0 They suspend judgments and decisions in the absence of sufficient evidence 0 They can anticipate the consequences of alternative actions 0 They can accurately explain their decisions 8. They consider alternative explanations for any state of affairs 2. The item "They can self-assess themselves" scored They are able to determine the truth or falsity of assumptions 5.

They develop and present reasoned and persuasive arguments 2. They distinguish between primary and secondary sources of information 0 My students distinguish credible from non-credible sources of information 0 They differentiate evidence from opinion, common sense and anecdotes 0 They distinguish opinions from facts 5. My students can draw inferences 5. My EFL Students formulate and ask appropriate questions 5.

They gather data from multiple sources relevant to a problem to be solved or a decision 5. They identify their preconceptions about important issues 5. They can listen attentively to others and provide them with appropriate feedback 0 They can assess and evaluate statements 8.

They have a keen sense of curiosity 2. They have a strong proclivity to validate statements 0 My students are open to criticisms 8. They can self-assess themselves 8. The second section of the questionnaire answers question two as seen in table 2 below.

Having a look at table 2 , one can see that To answer this question the researcher summarized all activities listed in the reports regarding the four domains the content, methods of teaching, classroom management and assessment tools or methods. Table 3 below shows the frequency of the critical thinking skills depicted in each of the four domains elicited from teachers' periods supervised by English Language supervisors. Table 2 : Percentages of participants' responses to the second section of the questionnaire No.

Palestinian EFL teachers need more training about how to teach critical Teaching critical thinking skills is an important part of my job as a language It is necessary to incorporate critical thinking into the ELT curriculum Critical thinking is especially important in English language teaching classes.

I build critical thinking explanations and exercises into most of my English I have a clear understanding of what critical thinking actually involves.

It is the primary job of the EFL teacher to teach critical thinking in the Regarding the content, there are 8 periods that include an activity or activities that foster critical thinking skills. Out of 79 periods, there are only 17 methods or techniques that enhance critical thinking skills used by teachers while delivering their lessons.

Some of that requires writing a letter, a composition or a reading comprehension passage. It is worth mentioning that most of these good lessons were delivered by female teachers. This was not a surprise to me, as I noticed this fact during my work as an English language supervisor for 10 years.

Assessment is another crucial domain that teachers should emphasize as it contributes to creating critical thinkers. Having a look at table 3 above, only 15 periods include an assessment that strengthens critical thinking skills. Number 15 above refers to the divergent questions used by teachers during periods. Convergent questions that focus on "what, when, where, etc.

With respect to classroom management, there are 16 techniques that advance critical thinking skills. The researcher classified pairings, groupings, brainstorming, and interaction among the ones that enhance critical thinking. Furthermore, most of the patterns of interaction were one-way direction T-S or S-T interaction.

This implies that teacher talking time overwhelmed the scene. Bloom's taxonomy of the levels of thinking was taken into account to investigate the level of thinking the questions or the activities assigned by the teacher address. According to Bloom, the cognitive domain has six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Rarely implemented, the highest thinking level appeared in these lessons was the synthesis level of thinking.

This means that the sixth level, evaluation, had not been addressed in any of the 79 periods. Table 3. Frequency of the critical thinking skills depicted in each of the four domains Grades Reports Content Methods of Assessment Classroom Level of teaching management thinking st 1 6 0 2 0 0 0 2nd 3 0 3 0 0 0 3rd 7 0 0 1 3 0 th 4 6 0 2 3 3 0 th 5 6 3 1 2 2 0 6th 6 3 2 0 3 1 th 7 5 0 1 0 0 0 th 8 15 1 2 2 1 0 9th 10 0 1 2 0 1 th 10 7 1 1 2 2 0 th 11 6 0 1 2 2 0 12th 2 0 1 1 0 1 Total 79 8 17 15 16 3 Question Four: What critical thinking skills should be incorporated into the content of an EFL curriculum for EFL learners in Palestine?

Textbooks play a crucial role in the process of teaching and learning. In many situations, they serve as the main source of learners input and the learning practices occur in classrooms Jack C. Richards, Students are also tested in the content they have covered during the lessons delivered throughout a specific period of time. As textbooks play a major role, curriculum designers should place a huge concern of the content of these textbooks.

Despite the advancement of the new technologies, textbooks remain to occupy a pivotal role in language teaching as it provides both teachers and learners with a useful resource they mainly depend on. Good textbooks integrate critical thinking skills in content, texts, activities, and tasks that address all levels and sometimes challenge learners' capacities and abilities.

To guarantee the integration of critical thinking skills, syllabus designers should include the following in the content: 1.

Activities and tasks that improve debating: Debates can stimulate learners' keenness to critically reflect on topics from different angles. The debate can perpetuate the intended learning outcomes when the curriculum encompasses real ones. These debates should include topics that are controversial, relevant to learners' level, interesting and inspiring.

Moreover, to have a sound and active participation and involvement from the students' side, learners should be informed about the debate beforehand allocating sufficient time to accomplish the task to give them an opportunity to express themselves critically and spontaneously.

When learners have enough time they can mull over the topic from multiple angles. Mass media Investigation: To create critical thinkers, the content of the EFL textbook should include topics taken from magazines, newspapers, televisions, YouTube channels, etc.

Via investigating and analyzing media, students not only be introduced to academic language but also to terminology that is relevant to sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, sociopolitical and many other authentic topics so close to students' life. As Palestinians, incorporating topics from media into the curricula will raise students' awareness of issues like occupation, quality, discrimination, tyranny, biasness, marginalization, boycotting, normalization, coexistence, etc. Problem-solving tasks and activities: To strengthen critical thinking skills among EFL learners, curricula should include activities and tasks that face learner with a dilemma or a problem to be resolved.

Students should be given enough time to find solutions for problems providing that they present genuine, reliable and inspiring answers that convince partners, audience or teachers. This should be accomplished through dividing the class into pairs or groups in which they describe the content, identify the problem, discuss the problem, provide multiple answers or solutions, select the most appropriate options or alternatives and lastly evaluate or reflect on the whole process.

Furthermore, teachers should present their students with problems to be solved, but they should take many points into account. First, they should start small choosing min-problems with questions related to the problem. Third, any selected problem should interest students and motivate them to resolve it. Fourth, an outline for problem-solving strategy is necessary to be handed to students as it helps them to be systematic throughout all stages of the process. Fifth, before students deliver their preferred solutions, teachers should urge them to examine the evidence, consider alternative viewpoints, and the consequences of the possible solutions.

Sixth, in case of having controversial issues, teachers should state some principles to be adhered to by all participants in each group. The main guideline principle should be the respect of the right of others to present different views especially when we have a disagreement.

Many reading comprehension texts: The more the students read the more vocabulary items they will learn. These items are learned in the context, not in separate lists. Moreover, these reading texts should cover different themes and address different reading strategies to equip students with these strategies as they deal with these texts. Even the questions that appear in these lessons as pre, while or after questions should conform to linguistic criteria to guarantee meaningful and sound learning.

For example, Starkey stated that the critical reading section should cover many critical thinking skills such as: a. Students should acquire the skills of getting the information, understanding what it suggests, and finally draw conclusions based on evidence.

Persuasion Techniques. To answer some questions, students need to evaluate arguments. To do so, they need to recognize the rhetorical devices usually used in persuasive writing. In these lessons, students need to know how logically one argues. As they progress, they will be able to create their own arguments.

Logical Fallacies: This skill enables learners to distinguish between valid and invalid arguments. Judgment Calls. This inference skill is in demand when learners have some evidence or proof, but not so reliable to depend on so that one can take a solid or clear-cut decision.

Therefore, students need here to judge and reflect on their answers. The content should include more writing tasks and activities. Matthews, Ruth, and Joe Lally assured that "Writing, thinking, and reasoning are inseparable.

If students reach university, they will be expected to demonstrate critical thinking whenever they write academic essays or reports within their chosen discipline. Assignments that require drafting and redrafting help focus thinking and sharpen thinking and reasoning within the subject" P.

More focus should also be placed on speaking activities that enhance many of the aforementioned skills. Higher communicative competence can be achieved through some practical activities such as: a.

Information-Gap Activities: In these activities, students work in pairs to share knowledge with each other. Student A has some information that students B doesn't. This activity forces them to share knowledge through negotiating meaning to bridge the gap for the sake of accomplishing the mission. Students have to write a dialogue on the topic given. The language practiced may vary according to the aim. Students may practice the comparative of adjectives, adverbs of frequency, etc.

The teacher uses flashcards, divides students into pairs, assign roles like student A and student B, etc. Simulation Activities: Simulation games embody roles; Jones defined simulation as a "reality of function in a simulated and structured environment" p. Jigsaw activities: It is a cooperative learning technique where students work in groups to learn from each other.

The jigsaw method was developed by psychologist Elliot Aronson in the s. Studies have shown that this promotes better learning, improves student motivation, and increases the enjoyment of the learning experience. Teachers should prepare assignments in advance and divide their students into groups of fives or sixes assigning a leader for each group. Then, they divide the assignment up into sections that equal the number of students in each group giving each student in each group one segment of this topic to learn.

Teachers should allocate sufficient time for each group to learn part of the topic. Next, students take turns to share what they have learned. Finally, each group member gets back to his original group teaching them what he has learned. In English for Palestine, there are few jigsaw activities. These activities should be increased in the curriculum as it provides students with a chance to collaborate with each other, share opinions, and discuss topics.

Surveys: Surveys are good tools that encourage students to communicate with other people and to write creatively. Students can write a report on a survey that they have prepared. Students work together and share information to complete the task. Interviews: Activities should be incorporated into the E4P curriculum that asks students to conduct interviews with different people targeting varied topics.

Students prepare a set of questions for their mates on the given topic or about a topic of their own interest. Students prepare questions at home as homework and then use them in class through presentations. Observations: Students can improve their critical thinking skills through being able to distinguish between important points and that of less importance.

They also learn how to listen and focus attentively jotting down all notes needed. Once they get back to classes, they need to deliver presentations talking about their experiences.

Methods of English language teaching have a pivotal influence on critical skills learning. Mayfield elucidate that students' awareness of critical thinking is raised through engaging them explicitly in critical thinking activities mainly conversing with others to contemplate upon their own thinking and be conscious of their thinking processes through questioning every issue.

But it is regrettable to say the most EFL teachers still follow traditional ways of teaching in the Palestinian schools.

Some of them still influenced by the way they were taught by, while others refrain from trying any genuine approach or strategy as they have been accustomed to specific fossilized approaches throughout their experience.

Pertaining to this point, I can claim that we have teachers with 25 years of experience who keep repeating ways of teaching of the first year. So, one can refer to such teachers by say "Teachers with teaching experience repeated for 25 times during 25 years". The one-year experience teachers form real obstacles in the face of genuine and innovative teaching approaches. It is the role of educators to equip students with the strategies and skills they need to think critically in order to cope with the problems and obstacles they face anywhere.

According to Janelle Cox , a number of techniques and strategies can be used by teachers that may lead to critical thinking learning.

Brainstorming: It is the first step before doing anything. One of the most effective strategies of creating critical thinkers is to brainstorm before you start any activity regardless of the subject. For example "What do you think our lesson will be about? What do you expect to learn upon the completion of this lesson? Reflect on the pictures above the reading passage? Classification and categorization: This helps students be more organized as they need to identify items and sort them in categories.

It also prolongs retention duration and facilitates the retrieval of the information when needed. Moreover, this strategy fosters self-inquiry as students start asking what object should go where, when, why and how. Comparing and contrasting: This strategy enhances thorough investigation of the items addressed since students need to learn all features relevant to each item to compare and contrast between them. For example, teachers can ask their students to compare and contrast between national and international cultures, customs, habits, etc.

Students can be asked to compare and contrast between the previous lesson and the new one or between the weather in Palestine and that in Canada etc. Making connections: When teachers urge their students to connect what they learn to their daily life, this is known as a transfer.

During this process, students transfer information and knowledge they learned inside classes to be applied and used in real life to overcome obstacles and difficulties. Grouping is a good opportunity for peers to communicate with each other away from the formal setting as the case with teachers. They can be problem solvers upon the completion of the activity as they exchange a variety of skills. It is also a chance for shy or reluctant students to participate. Team-building exercises: What distinguishes team-building exercises is that having no wrong or right answer.

It is a matter of opinions, views, attitudes, and beliefs. This kind of exercise teaches students many of the argumentative skills; they learn how to respect and accept others' opposite views. I think accepting others as they are without prejudice or stereotyped ideas are one of the main steps towards creating critical thinkers. Open-minded students always have the tendency to advance and develop their level in all aspects of life. Moreover, these exercises give students a room to practice the language in authentic contexts that are so close to real-life situations in which they strengthen their relationships with other team members as they struggle to prove one's point of views.

Picture strip story: It is one of the techniques suggested by Diane Larsen-Freeman in the communicative approach. This technique requires dividing the class into groups. A member of the group holds the first picture of the story asking his partners to guess or predict what the second picture looks like. He continues displaying pictures one by one till all get the complete story, not before prediction and thinking critically.

In such a technique an information gap always exists since the rest of the group doesn't know anything about the concealed pictures. This exercise also fosters problem-solving skills because it includes the three features of truly communicative activity. The more students communicate with each other exchanging views and ideas, the better critical thinkers will be.

In addition to information-gap activities, Diane Larsen-Freeman stated that opinion-gap activities and a reasoning-gap activity are another two types of tasks.

Opinion-gap activities require students to provide their feelings, thoughts, attitudes, proclivities, likes, dislikes, etc. Reasoning-gap activities require extracting or concluding some new information from the information they have already been supplied with. To find this new information, students need to use inference skills. During the implementation of all aforementioned techniques, the main advice that is of paramount importance is that teachers shouldn't always jump in to help.

They have to allocate time for each activity and wait till students consume it. During the allocated time teachers should go around offering help upon the request or when he thinks that he should do so. Teachers need to assist the students in figuring out the best potential solutions to the problem they face.

Innovative classrooms offer an atmosphere where EFL learners are more likely to express their thoughts and ideas, think outside the box, address problems with genuine answers and most significantly — learn faster and more efficiently. Classroom management significantly participates in enhancing learners' critical thinking skills.

Elder and Paul pointed out that having active questioners inside classes is of supreme importance in teaching critical thinking skills. Classroom management should include questions that urge students to deal with a dilemma from various different aspects and levels, such as inquiring into the purpose, interpretation, assumption, and implication of an issue.

They also emphasized the fact that deep questions drive learners' thought beyond the surface ones. Teachers need to develop their students' habit of questioning and inquiring. Socratic questioning boosts students' development and clarification of their thinking.

Questioning allows students to learn new material connecting it to previous ones and foreseeing future events or expectations based on data currently available. Homogeneous and heterogeneous groups are to be used in classes as they enhance critical thinking skills. The teacher himself is to decide whether to divide the class into homogeneous groups or heterogeneous ones. This depends on the tasks or the activities and the objectives of the lesson. The majority of Palestinian classes are of mixed ability learners.

If the purpose of the teacher is to assign different activities for different groups, the homogeneous groups are the solution. But if he intends to let able students teach their less able peers, heterogeneous groups is the answer.

It is also an opportunity for the successful ones to practice their skills by helping their classmates. Grouping may lessen some peer's struggle with other peers who excel them. Creativity is empowered through groups for students who have mastered the content, help their peers to comprehend and understand the material covered in previous classes.

Dividing classes into groups is not an arbitrary process organized by teachers. Teachers should not only assign a role for each member in the group, but they also provide each one with the description of his role.

These specified roles force lazy, shy or dependent learners to share knowledge with peers from the one hand, and stop dominant learners from controlling the scene giving no chance for other peers to participate from the other hand. Pairing is also a good technique that may enhance critical thinking skills. Good classroom manager knows well when to use open pairs or closed ones.

Working in pairs fosters exchanging and discussing ideas especially in debates. Teachers can shift to open pairs when he wants to let the rest of the class learn from the pair as a model especially when they are distinguished students debating or defending a genuine topic.

In order to keep the creativity flowing smoothly, teachers should keep their classroom physical environment layout adaptable and allow it to be easily reorganized. While conducting tasks and activities, teachers need to create a sense of humor to create a positive atmosphere that flourishes creativity. When students show progress, teachers should reward them as an incentive. Therefore, good responses or behaviors are likely to be repeated in the future.

Students are also motivated when teachers allow them to participate in identifying the goals they are to achieve. This will give them a clearer vision for where they want their learning to take them.

They naturally become more motivated to find genuine solutions to achieve goals. When achievements are reached, teachers should celebrate this with their students.

Teachers should also use different audio-visual aids. Displaying activities via audio-visual aids makes learning meaningful and inspiring, and students absorb knowledge deeply that help to store information in the long term memory. Through these aids, teachers have to encourage debates and discussion. Using creative and meaningful discussions and debates provide students with a plethora of ideas, opinions, feelings, attitudes and even resolutions depicted by their talks, arguments or presentations.

These debates and discussions are supposed to produce critical thinkers for many reasons. First, they urge students to critically think about the problem or the topic addressed. Second, it teaches them the skill of listening as students are challenged here to critically listen to peers because they need to respond to the counterpart debates of their peers. To successfully teach critical thinking skills to students, teachers should model these skills in classes before initiating tasks or activities.

Students often know we need to use the critical thinking process to make informed decisions about the information we receive. But, did you know we also need to think critically about the information we are fed in the first place?

Teaching critical thinking strategies to students is especially important right now to help students solve problems. This can be in your language arts class, your homeroom, or beyond! I used to teach 8th Grade in a grade High School. The Common Core State Standards recognizes the importance of informational texts across subjects as students progress from elementary to middle to high school.

Good critical thinking skills are key in academic success as well as to help out when we are drawing conclusions in everyday life. Critical thinking strategies are transferable. These critical thinking activities for middle school work well if you teach in a 7th or 8th grade English Language Arts class.

Also, 6th grade if you teach at a grade middle school or junior high school. Middle school is a great age! Students are old enough to delve into more complex issues, but still young enough to care.

Tough on the outside, but still sweet on the inside! Making the critical thinking process meaningful to students is one way to drive student engagement and participation in class. One of my favourite parts in the critical thinking lesson plan PDF is when students analyze the differences between social media and traditional news media. We often think that because citizen journalism in social media can be heavily biased because, well, anyone can post on social media. Then the slideshow lesson asks students to analyze this video :.

The critical thinking lesson plan PDF file provides a detailed script to help your students make an informed decision about social media vs traditional media. Usually, we use the critical thinking process to help students realize not to trust everything they see on social media. But, to be fair, we need to use that same critical thinking process regardless of where we get our information!

This critical thinking lesson unit ties in nicely with critical thinking reading strategies. So, if we start our reading strategy lessons first by showing how we think critically all the time in real life, then we just tell our students that we use the same strategies when reading!

It goes nicely with this critical thinking unit:. This would be idea for teaching critical thinking in English Language Arts as you get more options to divide the content throughout the year. Note, the critical thinking lesson plans pdf includes screenshots of each slide as well as slide numbers to help you get oriented. The lessons on hidden search engine bias Slides — Search Bubbles has been broken apart into smaller files that can be easily uploaded to separate Google Classroom assignments.

Each assignment would have. This is the good stuff. No, seriously. We tried to come up with different examples from various perspectives, but of course, we are human and have an unconscious bias as well.

Here are a few of the slides that we wanted to give you a heads up about. There may be other slides that you may want to modify. We suggest going through the material to make sure everything fits your needs. But, not everybody knows how to analyze the Search Engine Results Pages effectively to identify hidden bias. We need to think more critically before we draw conclusions- not only about the information we read online but also about the information choices we receive from our digital gatekeepers search engines, media streaming platforms, any other online service that provides a personalized experience based on algorithms.

Search Engine results pages are informational texts that we can and should analyze. Are your students biased? Do they know what fake news is? Can they see things from different perspectives?

How can we use logic and reason to form opinions, make decisions and solve problems? Lost at Sea Download the FREE resource Help students develop critical thinking skills by prioritizing a list of 15 items to help them survive if lost at sea. Lost at Sea is a classic activity that can be found all across the Internet.

By becoming aware of who we are, we can begin to think more critically to understand the perspectives of others — especially those from different backgrounds or points of view. Search Engine Bias Experiment Download the resource Help students improve Social Awareness and Responsible Decision-Making by understanding how search engines influence our bias and behaviour!

Should online dictionaries give the same definition for a given word? Should Google and other search engines give the same results for a given search phrase? But did you know Google personalizes our results as well? Search engine algorithms filter what shows up at the top of the list.

Becoming aware of this search bubble is a way for students to think more critically. Informational texts are things based on facts. In ELA, we often look at biographies, historical accounts, or textbook articles. Students explore the text form to analyze and identify potential bias. Fake News Download the resource Help students improve Social Awareness and Responsible Decision Making by exploring fake news from multiple points of view!