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In this Teaching Tip topic, Heather will
examine three multi-skill language activities
that support critical thinking skills development.
Welcome, Heather!
Hi, teachers! I am Heather, and today I am going
to talk about building critical thinking skills,
such as analysis, evaluation, and reflection for
the English language classroom. Let's begin!
Today, we'll explore three language activities that
support critical thinking for different age groups
and learner levels.
These activities will address three types of analysis:
visual, audio, and textual.
Some of you may have done activities that ask
advanced learners to explore and analyze complex
images, but let's look at how teachers can use this
type of exercise with very young, pre-literate, or
beginning level learners.
With the teachers support, these students can use their
critical thinking and language skills to give examples
provide evidence and make predictions.
So, let's pretend we have this image from a book for young learners.
It might be accompanied by a basic declarative
sentence like this one: "Matthew likes to ice skate
in the winter."
While reading the text aloud and showing the picture
to students would be perfectly acceptable input.
By asking a few questions before you expose students
to the text, you can activate their critical thinking skills,
even at these lower levels.
For instance, you can show the image and begin with
a question such as "Hm. Is it hot or cold in this picture?"
Then, after students answer, follow-up with questions
that ask students to provide evidence for their
responses such as "What do you see or how do you know it's cold?"
Students can then use simple language to point out
features in the image like icy snow, or the boy has a hat
and gloves, or no leaves on the trees.
Then teachers can ask students prediction questions
such as "What will the boy do next?"
followed by more questions that seek supporting
information.
While these question and response situations might
seem simple, they do allow beginners or young learners
to build a critical thinking habit of providing support for
their answers.
Next, let's look at how students can use a graphic
organizer called the KWL chart to activate prior
knowledge, make predictions, and identify key information from a listening text.
As you'll see, this activity is suited for older, primary
students and above.
Students will use the chart both before and after they
interact with a listening text.
So, here is an example KWL chart which might be
familiar to some of you.
The chart gets its name from the information students will enter.
In the K column, before listening, students use prior
knowledge to write down what they think they already
know, K, about the topic after the teacher supplies the
text, title, or general theme.
Also, before listening, in the center W column students
use prediction and analysis skills to write down what
they want to know, as a result of listening to the text.
Finally, after listening, students complete the L column
on the right that asks them to reflect on what they
learned from the text.
They can then compare and analyze the columns of
information to conclude the activity.
And, finally, let's look at a critical thinking language
analysis activity about identifying facts and opinions
in written text.
You can use this activity with a variety of content
topics and you can adapt the difficulty level by selecting
more or less complex written text.
The ability to differentiate factual statements from
opinion-based statements is a key aspect of information literacy.
This skill helps our students become more critical,
thoughtful readers and listeners.
For example, perhaps your class is working on a unit
about travel or vacations.
You can have students analyze a level appropriate travel
brochure such as this one I made about Anchorage, Alaska.
Ask students to read the text and underline all of the
statements that are opinions rather than verifiable,
factual statements.
Students will read, analyze, and mark the text.
They can do this on their own and then discuss their
selections with their partner.
So, the students' marked text might look like this.
The opinion statements are underlined.
"The best food..everyone will love its cultural activities...
it has the most beautiful parks and trails," etc.
Next, take the analysis a little deeper and ask students
to identify words in the sentences that made them mark
the statements as opinions.
So, students will circle the keywords, again working
individually or in pairs, and the text might then look
like this.
Now you can lead students through a discussion about
these clue words to help them form mental rules or patterns
they can apply as they read or write other texts.
A follow-up activity might be for students to create
their own travel brochures in groups, applying these ideas.
Summing up, today we examined how teachers can use
three activities to develop students' critical thinking skills.
These activities can all be adapted to suit many content
types and learner groups.
I hope you found these tips useful.
Thank you for joining me, and thanks for all that you do
to support your English language learners.
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