Our critical thinking worksheets help improve your ability to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information and ideas in a thoughtful and systematic manner.
AI integration in education can enhance higher order thinking skills by using AI to generate higher-level questions that promote critical thinking & creativity
10 Ideas to help students learn science vocabulary words10 Ideas to help students learn science vocabulary words-- awesome for 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade
Use these 3 techniques to help your students build critical and higher-level thinking skills.
Pool noodles provide great learning opportunities!
A poster created for our English language arts and social studies departments (humanities) to use in their classroom, as well as in the library.
When teaching force and motion, go beyond just a car on the ramp. Consider other activities such as the ones in this post to engage your students!
Higher-level thinking belongs in all classrooms, not just gifted and talented ones. Check out these tips for encouraging it in yours!
A digital curation project is a fast way to engage critical thinking in any content area. Here's how it works.
This post is also featured on the TpT blog. What is higher order thinking? When I am talking about my students and higher order thinking, I am talking about the ability to use critical thinking skills to transfer their knowledge in order to solve a problem. Well that wasn’t the most simple way to […]
Looking for STEAM activities to challenge your children? I designed 30 STEAM activities presented as stimulus prompt cards. They engage and challenge my children as they explore concepts in S cience, T echnology, E ngineering, A rt and M ath. STEAM activities take STEM activities to the next
Teachers everywhere want their students’ thinking to be self-guided and self-disciplined. They encourage students to reason, analyze, and communicate effectively so they will increase academic achievement and become lifelong learners. It can be quite a challenge to teach higher order thinking skills, but there are practical ways to incorporate opportunities to think critically into each school day. Here …
During the school year we read Flying Solo by Ralph Fletcher. As a way to culminates the novel and review skills for our state assessment we created Bloom Balls. A Bloom Ball is a 3D project that challenges students to use all of the levels of Bloom's taxonomy. My Smarties L-O-V-E-D this project! They had so much fun making each section and talking to each other about favorite parts, character traits, and themes. This Novel Bloom Ball is a series of 12 circles. Students create the ball by writing 12 different activities based on the novel. The questions ask students to discuss the setting, character traits, symbolism, theme, make connections between the book and other text, draw pictures, and look critically at vocabulary. You can make the sections whatever you need them to be, and on what ever topic your students are studying. They can be fiction or nonfiction, author study, biography, you name it. This project is so versatile. Take a look at the pictures below of my student projects, and consider adding this to your "TO-DO LIST" for the next year. I'm sure students could create amazing projects based on summer reflections or as an All About Me project for Back to School! If you are interested in a Novel Study- Book Report Bloom Ball project, you can go {HERE}.
Teach your students to use critical thinking with this activity that is guaranteed to use higher order thinking (HOTS). And BONUS: this strategy is perfect for any elementary content area too!
Use these 3 techniques to help your students build critical and higher-level thinking skills.
Use STEM engineering activities in elementary school as a fun, engaging, and meaningful way to tackle the Next Generation Science Standards.
With Earth Day right around the corner, this is the perfect time to teach your kids about the harmful effects of pollution. This oil spill experiment promises to open your kiddos eyes to the devastating effects of water pollution on our planet...
I can’t remember where I first learned about hexagons in the classroom. But I’ve loved them ever since I started exploring the idea. If you’re already using hexagons, good on you.…
You’ve found the one-stop shop for nature-based homeschool curriculum and video classes. No matter your style, we have a nature-based science series for your family!
Happy Monday! Today we brainstormed animal adjectives. Then they compeleted the little rhyme below using an animal of their choice and two a...
Matariki is a great topic to integrate across subject areas as it easily links into social science, science, te reo Māori, drama, visual arts...and the
This resource includes 20 different EDITABLE exit slips you can use as formative assessments and reading checks in any content area. I used similar exit slips as a reading teacher, but as a literacy coach, I realized that teachers across the curriculum could use a similar tool--especially as increased reading demands are knocking at our doors. In addition to the exit slips themselves (two on each page), I've included a general explanation/introduction, seven pages of instructions and tips on how to use each of the slips, a chart identifying which CCSS could be met by each technique, and a page of labels so you can make your own little basket with dividers for easy access in your classroom (see thumbnail). My goal with this product was to develop something that the teachers in my school can use in any class--history, science, careers, health, web design--to have their students demonstrate understanding of texts or lessons. In my instructions, I have offered suggestions on how to frame each exit slip for both reading and as a general formative assessment in the form of a true exit slip. I've also provided tips and suggestions gleaned from 20 years of teaching and using these techniques. Many of them are based on reading strategies I learned from my professional reading and attendance at conferences. Update: December 2016 I've created easy-to-use digital versions of these exit slips (and added a few more to the collection). Check out my Digital Exit Slips: a collection of 30 Google Slides to use in your 1:1 classroom!
-This issue we focus on our thinking touchstone Having a range of thinking tools available to us is very useful. They help ensure the engagement and stimulation of a wide variety of students. But, …
Enjoy teaching sound energy activities! Your third, fourth, or fifth grade students will love the hands-on stations.
Higher level questioning is on everyone's minds these days. I knew I wanted to create something for Blooms, but just couldn't decide on how I wanted it to look in my classroom. It's always been something I just do without even thinking. I always gear my questioning toward higher level thinking, but don't necessarily tell my students where each question ranks on the Bloom's Hierarchy. I've come up with a little something to incorporate more of the Bloom's language and questioning in my day to day classroom discussions. We always have a read aloud for the week, whether it's from our reading adoption (Reading Street) or a trade book. My plan is to use this form to teach the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and then have them answer questions about the story at the different levels of Blooms. My analogy will be when the shirt is fully buttoned, then you are fully dressed and ready to go. And when you are able to answer all the button level questions, then you have a full or complete understanding of the story. My plan is to have button breaks, where a student will randomly choose a colored button from a can. The color they choose will correspond to a Bloom's Button Card which contains a question that corresponds to a particular level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Some times I may have them answer the question independently, they could do this either orally or in a journal. Other times they may try to answer the question with a buddy or a group. The goal is to get them thinking about the story as well as their own thinking!!! These are the buttons that I'm using in my jar. Nice and big. Notice that the orange buttons are missing in the middle picture above. Well, we had an uh oh, this evening. My toddler decided to stick the orange buttons inside the skinny opening of my very expensive laminator. Yikes, it was not fun finding a solution for that one!!! Here is an example of a few of the cards. There are 9 questions for each of the 6 levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. There are also blank (editable) cards provided for you to add your own questions as you see fit. There is also a black line master available of the Button Chart, if you would like to have your students color it in and then place it in a journal/notebook to refer to throughout the year. You can click the picture below to head on over to my teacher store. Hope my students and possibly yours love their button breaks!!!
An introduction to phenomenon based learning and a weather unit on PhenomBL
These 5 no-prep strategies for grades 3-12 can turn just about any rote practice worksheet into a collaborative critical-thinking activity.
A blog post sharing information about why Contraction Surgery is a success in classrooms! Hands-on information is shared. #ContractionSurgery
A blog with classroom tips and ideas, teacher mentoring, educational resources, and classroom practices for elementary and middle grades.
Hexagonal thinking is an outstanding strategy for helping your students have creative discussions and make innovative connections. In this post, find out how to use it in so many different ways - to build community, work on argument writing, connect novels with current events, and more.
Have you ever felt that getting your students to think outside of the box is like pulling teeth? Some kids either just don’t know how or they are afraid of being “wrong”. Today, I…
Mechanical and chemical weathering can be difficult for students to understand. It can be even more difficult to find hands on science experiments and activity for physical and chemical weathering. Find chemical and mechanical experiments, hands-on activities, and entire lesson in this easy to use resource.
Enjoy teaching sound energy activities! Your third, fourth, or fifth grade students will love the hands-on stations.
Be a great social studies teacher with these use-tomorrow, science-backed teaching strategies.
Sketching as Design Thinking : Hoffmann, Alma R.: Amazon.it: Libri
Everybody is talking about RIGOR or asking, "What is rigor?" If you do any research on rigor, you will find that rigor does not mean diffi...
