CRITICAL THINKING IN TEACHING VOCABULARY

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my blog . 

Today I am going to talk about critical thinking skills especially how important is it for children or pupils to develop and practice it since in the very beginning years of school. This ability to think critically is an asset that will stand your child in good stead as they move through primary school into secondary and throughout their adult lives.

Why critical thinking matters? 

Critical thinking is a vital part of children's development and learning to use it help them to make sense of the world around them. Also , it helps them make value judgements and try to figure things out if something don't make sense. 

How to develop critical thinking skills?

Children are not very capable of critical thinking from an early age , but they actually do it , too. 

For example children as young as five and six use counter examples ( Not all birds fly : chickens  are birds , and they don't fly ); draw  distinctions( Heroes are not the same as superheroes ) .  So that means that the pupils of grade 2 or 3 are better critical thinkers compared with those of the age five or six. 

Here are some advice to help your pupils  to use critical thinking as they grow ! 

Every teacher should encourage their pupils to give reasons and examples that  show agreement and disagreement about different topics and discussions. If we ask a pupil 'Why? or Do you agree? Or is something wrong or right ? and so on so forth. 

To help your child develop critical thinking skills, get into a habit of questioning them about their thoughts and opinions. There are five simple ways to do this:

• Ask why: get them to provide justification, explanation, purpose or motivation.
• Ask for clarification: ‘Can you say what you mean by…?’
• Ask for more: ‘Can you say more about that?’
• Ask for an example or counter-example: ‘Can you give me an example?
• Ask for conditions: ‘Can you say what it would depend on?

Perhaps the most important thing you can do to help your pupils  become a critical thinker is to model good critical thinking yourself,’ . ‘Notice, monitor and evaluate your own critical thinking, and, if necessary, take steps to improve it.’