Critical Thinking
Teaching children today is awesome and at WISH we are grateful for the many instructional methods available to support students in developing critical thinking skills. Critical thinkers are able to make more effective and strategic decisions based on the evidence in front of them, not what they’re told by others or assumptions they've previously made. Young people are able to see what’s relevant, what’s accurate and what is unnecessary.
Using a variety of instructional strategies, teachers facilitate and support inquiry, conversations, and deep reasoning to support all students in developing necessary critical thinking skills.
Six core skills are required for thinking critically:
- Problem-solving: developing a strategy and creating workable solutions
- Analysis: breaking arguments down into bite-sized chunks
- Creative thinking: finding new and often unexpected solutions to all sorts of problems
- Interpretation: decoding the meaning and significance of evidence or experiences
- Evaluation: weighing the strengths and weaknesses of an argument (including those of others) and dealing fairly with disagreements
- Reasoning: the production of compelling and persuasive arguments
(Researcher - Van den Brink-Budgen, R.)