Critical Thinking

Encourage higher-level thinking

Many textbooks include review questions at the end of a chapter or section. Often, those questions require simple, lower-order thinking skills.

For example, a social studies text might ask, “What three rivers flowing through Russia are connected by canals?” Students do not have to understand very much about what they have just read in order to find and copy the answer from the text.

Instead, ask questions that require higher-level thinking skills. Think about rewording the question. Or ask a follow-up question that will have students rereading, considering and thinking.

You might ask, “How would Russia’s transportation system be affected if there were no canals to link the Don, Dnieper and Volga rivers?” “What type of impact (if any) would this have on trade?”

Questions like these require your students to choose facts from throughout the text and then develop a response.

Reprinted with permission from the March 2007 issue of Better Teaching® (Secondary Edition) newsletter. Copyright © 2007 The Teacher Institute®, a division of NIS, Inc. Source: Vicki A. Jacobs, “What Secondary Teachers Can Do to Teach Reading,” Harvard Education Letter Research Online, www.edletter.org/past/issues/1999-ja/abstracts.shtml.