With the 21st century upon us and an increasing amount of information at our fingertips, it would be to our students' advantage to realize the importance of thinking critically. And, if part of our job as teachers is to prepare our students for life after formal education, then it is our duty to provide opportunities for students engage in higher order thinking. This slide show supports critical thinking in the classroom and provides a sample lesson that requires students in 6 thru 8th grades to use higher order thinking in math and science. Please be informed that a significant portion of the lesson was created by another individual as noted in the Source page that concludes the slide presentation.

1. Critical Thinking...
for LIFE.
Karen Rice EDD 550

2. Teach your students to think critically. With
enough practice and by setting examples of how
efficiency in thinking critically can empower them
for educational success and success in life
endeavors, they will be encouraged to see critical
thinking as a tool to make the right decisions
and/or help them solve problems that require
deeper, more analytical thought processes. The
power and confidence gained by making
informed decisions is a worthy reward.

3. Some students have the natural ability to ask higher
cognitive questions when evaluating experimental
findings in science or solving math problems.
However, many students do not have this innate skill and
need to learn how to ask higher order questions. A
teacher can encourage students to use critical thinking is
by modeling these skills for her students. Students will
inherently follow their teacher’s lead; this is why it is
important to practice what we preach.

4. Why do we need to provide plenty of critical thinking
opportunities in science and math?
The purpose of science is to learn about and understand
the world around us. And, in order to accomplish
this, we need to participate in activities and conduct
experiments. As rookie scientists, students need to
analyze, synthesize, compare, question, draw
conclusions, predict, and evaluate among other skills.
They need to be able to figure out the accuracy of their
solutions and findings. With maximum knowledge about
each of the various science disciplines, humans can have
healthy and convenient living. In another branch of
science, we have engineering. Engineers solve problems
and design solutions to meet human needs. Higher order
thinking and engineering go hand- in- hand.

6. Critical thinking opportunities in math are equally
necessary. Memorizing
formulas, theorems, postulates, and equations will
only take the learner so far. Students who are
successful in math have general math sense that
they can apply in their higher order thinking.
Critical thinking in math deals with understanding
relationships and the whys, and hows, and ifs.
When presented with a problem, an effective
math student will be able to comprehend/process
what the question is asking. The first step of an
effective math student is to understand the
problem; he would not just act spontaneously to
create an algorithm that would satisfy only one
part of the problem.

7. Where do we find opportunities to encourage
critical thought processes?
In the following (grades 6 thru 8) lesson that
integrates math, earth science, and geography
students need to use critical thought processes to
learn and understand the reasons for the climate
differences among three United States regions:
Denver, New Orleans, and Phoenix.

8. Denver (an inland city)
New Orleans (located on the Gulf)
Phoenix (located on the Sonoran Desert)

9. Within this lesson there will be opportunities for
critical thinking related to both math and science.
The students will learn how meteorologists
collect different kinds of weather data, including
temperatures and rainfall that occur on a daily
and/or monthly basis. With this information, the
students will create a graph that compares these
three climates.

11. To begin, we can encourage critical thinking by asking the students
to make predictions about the cities’ climates and to support their
predictions with statements of reason. In order to make
predictions and to reason, students will need to access their prior
knowledge: Lower cognitive knowledge, such as knowing facts (i.e.
I know that land next to bodies of water have more moisture and
rainfall.) assists the learner with higher cognitive learning (critical
thinking). And, in this lesson, prior knowledge pertaining to the
geographic location of these cities becomes useful for critical
thought (reasoning for the purpose of making predictions) as well.
Are they near the equator where temps are warmer and/or
humidity is higher? Reasonably, there is still an obvious need for
lower cognitive learning in classrooms as well. For without
knowledge of facts and basic understanding of why things are the
way they are, the ability to think critically is compromised.

12. Critical thinking can open the lesson: What kinds of
animals and plants grow in the desert? Why?
Ask students to look at the data on the average daily high
temperatures chart . Ask if someone can interpret and
explain what these temperatures mean. Explain that daily
high temperatures are averaged together to find the average
monthly temperatures. Ask students to choose a month or
two from the average daily high temperatures chart and
calculate the monthly average. They can check their
answers on the monthly averages chart . Have students note
the rainfall data on the chart. The rainfall data for each
month was averaged together to get these figures in the
same way that students have just averaged the
temperatures.
*right-click to open hyperlinks, please.

13. Sources:
• Cotton, Kathleen, Classroom Questioning, North
West Regional Educational Laboratory.
• Paul, Richard, Critical Thinking: How to Prepare
Students for a Rapidly Changing
World, Foundation for Critical Thinking.
• Alabama Learning Exchange
http://alex.state.al.us/plans2.php?std_id
=40896
• National Geographic Education natgeoed.org
• Xpedition-
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/
hall/