100 ideas for encouraging critical thinking in the classroom.

• Each idea has been tried and tested across the age and ability range.

• Every idea is linked to a practical activity that can be launched immediately. Every activity stimulates creative thinking in your chosen topic / subject area.

• Widely applicable across the curriculum for supporting a creative-thinking skills approach to teaching and learning.

Published by Continuum - ISBN: 0-8264-8479-4 @ £8.99

Go to: www.continuumbooks.com for more titles in the 100s range.

And the 100 ideas are...

Building the Thinking Environment:

1. What is Thinking?
2. Memory and Imagination – two basic resources for thinking
3. The Mind-Body Link – thoughts, feelings and physical reactions are connected
4. Basic Principles of How the Mind Works – thoughts we know about and thoughts we don’t
5. Logic Brain and Artist Brain – the range of our thinking abilities
6. Brainscapes, Thoughtscapes and Wordscapes – language, thoughts and braincells are linked
7. Present Moment Awareness – the importance of now in thinking
8. States of Mind – brainwaves and different kinds of thinking
9. The Four Classic Stages of the Thinking Process – from inspiration to completion
10. Kekule’s Snakes and Other Reveries – thoughts, dreams and what we didn’t know we knew!
11. The Mind as a ‘Perpetual Notion Machine’ – to have good ideas have lots of ideas
12. Peak Experiences – why having ideas feels good
13. Adventure of Enquiry – an attitude towards thinking
14. The Principle of Utilization – everything is useful for thinking
15. The Tools Sharpen Themselves – learning by doing and the thinking agenda
16. The A-U-C Principle – awareness, understanding and control
17. The I’s Have It – imagination, intellectual skills, intuition and immersion
18. Building Blocks of the Thinking Classroom – establishing a powerful thinking environment
19. Drawing Out and Rearing Up – the roots of education
20. Goal-Oriented versus Reactive Thinking
21. The ERV Formula – Envision, Realize, Verify – a strategy for effective thinking
22. Strategic Thinking – keeping your options open
23. Paying Attention To Language
24. The Power of Etymology – the roots of meaning
25. What Are Metas For? – metaphorical thinking and ‘meaning making’
26. ‘Building a Literature’ – language, thinking and subject areas

 

Tools of the Game:

27. Creative and Critical Thinking Tools – overview of some ways of thinking
28. The What-Do-We-Know Triangle – taking an active approach to knowledge
29. As A Matter of Fact – strategies for engaging with facts
30. True, False and Dare – looking for truth beyond facts
31. Deep and Surface Structure – ‘going beyond the given’
32. Occam’s Razor and Theories of Everything – an approach to verifying facts
33. Analyzing for Assumption
34. Making It Explicit – a strategy for effective analysis
35. Analyzing for Bias
36. Filters and Alleys – we see the world as we are
37. Attributing
38. Odd-One-In and Other Games
39. Classifying
40. In A Class of Their Own – activities for classifying
41. Comparing and Contrasting
42. Taking It Forward – developing comparing and contrasting
43. Decision Making
44. I Used To Be Indecisive, But Now I’m Not So Sure
45. Determining Cause and Effect
46. One White Crow – theories as approximations of truth
47. Drawing Conclusions
48. When You Have Eliminated the Impossible… - make your train of thought explicit
49. Hypothesizing
50. But Why? – creating explanations
51. Predicting
52. What Happens Next?
53. Prioritizing
54. I Know My Place – some prioritization games
55. Diamond Ranking – a prioritization technique
56. Problem Solving
57. A Rummage Through the Toolbox – some problems to solve
58. Chunking – how do you eat an elephant? One chunk at a time
59. Sequencing
60. Lines, Trees, Cycles and Mazes – some strategies for sequencing
61. Making and Solving Analogies
62. The Mind is a Spiderweb Because…? – metaphors and analogies clarify thoughts
63. Interfaces – a linking device
64. Many Endings – keeping options open
65. Questioneering – thinking expressed as active questioning
66. The Expert Outside – a questioneering game
67. What Would Winnie-The-Pooh Say to Spiderman? – questions and contexts
68. Yin Yang Thinking – looking at both sides of a situation
69. The Point-Of-View triangle – introducing the neutral observer
70. Mediations – avoiding extremes in thinking
71. The Teamwork Triangle – creative, intellectual, people-oriented
72. The Learning Curve
73. Creative Excursions – going beyond routine thinking
74. Bifurcations and Decision Trees
75. Dead and Living Graphs – graphs that encourage active questioning
76. Concept Maps
77. The Three Column Game – a creative linking game
78. What If and What If Stars – focusing thoughts and questions
79. Faction – a game for exploring possibilities
80. Beyond the Frame – combining thinking skills
81. Thought Lines and Chunks – organising thoughts of different ‘scales’
82. Context Grids
83. Mind Maps
84. Themes as Integrating Forces
85. Motifs – details that describe and define
86. Vivid Particularities – making a powerful impression

 

Bringing It All Together:

87. Good Habits for Learning
88. A 1-6 Scale for Understanding
89. Concept Pie – assessing understanding
90. Bloom’s Hierarchy of Thinking – low order and higher order thinking
91. Higher Order Thinking, Lower Order Thinking and Fun Thinking
92. Narrative Techniques for Effective Learning
93. A Melange of Motivators
94. Annotated Notebooks – a review technique
95. A Range of Responses to Information
96. Conventions of Genre and Form
97. Seven dispositions for Effective Thinking
98. Unlocking Learning
99. Attainment and achievement
100. Food for Thought

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