Valerie Coskrey's Classroom Tools and Ideas

Five Activities for
Fostering Critical Thinking

Get royalty-free photos for just $1.00.  

Memory Game - 
Hot Product at Magic Cabin!

Ball And Open Cube Brainteaser Puzzles

Being a science teacher trained to appreciate inquiry teaching, content area reading, and conceptual change theory; being an avid reader of science fiction; being a movie and tv fan; and being an explorer of the internet, I have collected a few items that I consider useful for fostering critical thinking. Many ideas will do triple duty in that they also create teachable moments, and frequently motivate students to learn more. I want to say that they enable more effective classroom management, and in some ways they do; but I have found that hands-on teaching requires its own set of classroom management skills and so I do not offer the ideas as a panacea for controlling a difficult class.

1. Get students to write. Stimulate their imagination using images, half-told stories, snippets of movies or tv shows, post-discussion of the entire story, movie or show, a common hands-on activity or demonstration, or a statement of a controversial issue or challenge. Book reports, lab reports, and discussion questions all fall into this category for stimulating student thought, but teachers can always go one step further by providing an additional stimulus of high interest to the students. By choosing media with a connection to the unit topic, the excercise becomes enrichment, on-task, and an integral part of the teaching unit.

poisson rouge dans un aquarium © Gilles Cohen

Source: fotolia.com, a source of royalty-free images.
You pay only $1-3per image, or you can trade a picture of your own.

Gilles Cohen is the photographer of this image.

Consider this picture. Imagine the essays that students might write about thinki;ng outside the box, achievement, leap of faith, animal behavior, the story of fish, requirements for life, stress of competition, niche, and the beat of a different drum. You can even get students to solve math/science problems like how high did the fish jump, what is the size of the fish based on the scale of the picture (hint: use average size of a goldfish?), and what is the momentum required for the fish's trajectory (The fish escaped the bowl; what is the "escape" velocity?) Elementary students can write stories about the lonely fish. There are several companion pictures on the Fotolia page to which the first link will take you. (The photos there are a joy to view. Check out the ladybug on the tip of a blade of grass!)

During a unit on ecology I had my biology classes listen to the song The Circle of Life. I gave them a print-out of the words and had them sing-a-long. I then asked them to write a short essay about what the song said to them. I got some some beautiful essays about the metaphors in the song.

Buy the sheet music.
Circle Of Life - Sheet Music (Digital Download)
Circle of Life - From 'Lion King' - Music Book

I also learned that motivational activities must be presented properly if I wanted students to learn the desired lesson. In each of two classes I had assigned the essay on the song at the same sequence in the unit. In one class I had asked the class to write an essay about what the song said to eacg of them. Thinking that the class discussion on ecology that we had just completed would focus their thoughts on life cycles, niches, compitition, and resource limits, I was a bit shocked to read essay after essay on the power of faith and generosity of God and some knowledgeable discourse on the value of metaphors. (Naturally, I gave passing grades based on essay quality, since the assignment had been given as, "Tell what it means to you.") A bit wiser, I assigned the next class to write what the "Song says to you in terms of our discussions during the past couple of days on ecology." From this class I received some insightful statements about the principles of ecology and some knowledgeable discourse on the value of metaphors. One little phrase included in the assignment kept the assignment open-ended yet on-task in terms of the lesson and still enjoyable for the students as a critical-thinking activity.

2. Offer games to students. Remember the games we played as children? Monopoly and Life and Old Maid and even Go Fish all taught/reinforced age-appropriate skills. Think about the abstractions of classification and strategy and just plain keeping track of events and the impact of events on one's portfolio. Small groups can gather at a computer to play online, or with individual software programs for enrichment or as a planned skills lesson. Simulations and games motivate students in unique ways. (Click an image or link on this page to purchase that game or item from the sponsoring merchant.) Challenge students with Othello., a game of strategy. Try these challenging board games. The schemes of The Game of Life translate well to the memes of modern pop culture.

Download over 200+ puzzle and action games at Shockwave.com. 

Visit the Toy Shop to get a range of educational toys and games sold by numerous merchants.Use the search boxes to locate specific toys and games. Try different merchants until you find what you want. A good key word to try for each merchant is "educational toys".

3. Optical illusions, brain teasers, and online simulations all offer opportunities to develop critical thinking skills. The internet abounds with such activities. One site associated with the Google gadget below is this blog, Mighty Optical Illusions. It has beautiful artwork associated with illusions. (One page from the site has two widget/gadgets on optical illusions in addition to the beautiful optical illusion painting. The comments from the people trying to find all 13 get a bit risque in their expressions of frustration in not finding all 13, but the rare obscenities are generally mild.) I have made a list of a few of the websites that include interactive learning activities in math and science on the Student Thematic Links page. I add to the list as I find more sites. (Send ideas for links to me via the forum, or email, please.) I have found numerous items for fostering critical thinking among toys, games, and online widgets/gadgets. (Try the ones below.) Some of these resources work well as independent enrichment activities, some as group activities, some as integral parts as a lesson. Also, consider them as fillers for that extra 5 minutes or so.

There are rich lessons utilizing these activities available at Homeschooling Supply and Teachnology, Inc., many of which are free. Try the lesson plans that I wrote for using widgets in science. Read about them here. Feel free to download the sample lesson plan/lab write-up assignment form that follows the format of the Widgets Science lessons.

The gadgets below are from Google;Yahoo calls theirs widgets. Both are free downloads. (Click on the gadget's Google button to go to Google Gadgets.)

....  

I have included more gadgets throughout my site. Locate them using the sit map page. For instance, the subject chart "Social Studies" lists the gadget of history. If the link is broken, check back. Some pages are still under construction. If you want an update, join the forum or the newsletter. The gadgets and their uses are really intriguing to me.

4. Building models and robots also fosters critical thinking. First there are the skills involved in following directions, in working with scale models, and in relating the concrete structure to an abstract idea. Modeling is a teaching strategy I often used in teaching science. The constructed model also served as a vehicle for demonstrating concepts and for discovering what about a concept was still confusing or misunderstood by a student. An example of how effective models are for teaching is the experience of teaching chemistry with the MolyMod kits. Many teachers use the marshmallows and toothpicks to accomplish the same thing: model the structure of a molecule with its bonds between its elements. Most educators agree that hands-on learning is one of the more effective teaching strategies. From experience, I know that modeling involves students: they like doing models that are geared to their abilities and learning level, and they enjoy the group work of modeling. Within the realm of models are math manipulatives, puzzles, robots, and many science lab activities.

Pattern Blocks & Games Special	Deluxe Fraction Tower Activity Set	I offer search boxes for the toy, puzzles and games merchants and pages of educational toys and games in the Toy Shop pages. Music and instruments merchant products and search boxes are offered in the Music Store pages.
Save up to 70%  in the HearthSong Outlet!	KBtoys.com: Top Learning Systems for All Ages!

5. Provide a broad range of experiences, images, and conceptualizations via real and virtual instances. About this I have written and included essays from others concerning the value of using science fiction in the classroom. One of the factors that impedes students in the poorer school districts and communities is lack of cultural experiences. The movies To Sir with Love and Dangerous Minds make this point for the general public.

Actual experience can be hard to obtain. In today's technological age, virtual experiences are easily obtainable from movies, educational videos, photos and books on all kinds of topics. To locate movies with descriptions, try http://www.imbd.com. Art and music foster critical thinking. Patel, in a talk on UCTV's Music and the Mind discussed the value of music in developing cognitive thought and how the brain responds to music. This talk is offered as a streaming video, free. (More info and resources on this topic are in the Music Store.)   Read more about using movies in teaching.

 Shop the Learning Disabilities section of Shop.pbs.org ... Shop the PBS Kids Shop at shop.pbs.org

You can get streaming videos of many of the science, political, cultural and fine arts documentaries and talks of booktv, uctv, uwtv, documentary channel, limetv, and others on line. Many are excellent. Google the name of the show, the talk, the network or the speaker to find a wealth of resources. Some I have written about either here or in my blog, Valerie's Soapbox. I try to include links and products that reinforce any lesson that would use the show. Again I welcome contributions of ideas and links from you either in the forum or by email.

It is for this reason--broadening the backgrounds of students--that I began partnering with my chosen merchants and to posting the music, software, ebook, book, science fiction book, videos and magazine stores. Go to All Stores for which my mantra is "Chosen with teaching in mind." Look for the essay concerning music and learning linked from the Music Store.

// Home // All Stores // All Essays // Product Catalog // Shopping Cart // Privacy // Contact //

Site Map and Pages Sorted by Subject Matter with a list of All Valerie's Sites

Copyright 2005-2007 by Valerie Coskrey All rights reserved.

Last modified 7/07