Critical Thinking Skills Teacher Resources

Young journalists use a "Is This Story Share-Worthy?" flowchart graphic to decide whether a story is worth sharing online. Instructors provide groups with fake news, poor quality stories, opinion pieces, biased news, and high-quality...

The 2016-2017 protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) motivated Camille Seaman to create "We Are Still Here," a photo essay featuring portraits of contemporary Native Americans who protested the pipeline. This eight-page packet,...

A lesson on evaluating sources of information teaches scholars to "think twice" before using a source. Researchers examine a resource's home page, author, and sponsor, as well as the date published and the documentation provided.

Can you imagine what it's like to be able to carve an animal out of stone? Kids do, as they analyze the techniques used to create the South Indian sculpture, Sacred Bull of Shiva. After a critical look at the piece, they write a...

The New York Times' Learning Network provides great lessons! This one uses articles from the paper to help readers understand homonyms like mail (verb and noun). It also includes an exercise in reading informational text. Links to the...

Discuss the difference between legitimate debate on a political issue and arguments that are based on hate through a science-fiction scenario that shows how a controversial issue can be discussed in both ways. Then learn how purveyors of...

In An Image of Africa, Chinua Achebe calls out Joseph Conrad for his racist attitudes in Heart of Darkness. Achebe contents that despite the fact that Conrad's novel is a blistering attack on Colonialism in the Congo, his characters are...

Responsible decision making relies on the ability to a recognize, analyze, and evaluate claims. The worksheets and activities in this 32-page packet teach learners how to distinguish among opinions, reasoned arguments, facts, and logical...

Everyone knows a tree makes a sound when it falls, but what do we know about dying trees? Class members learn background information about Laurel wilt disease from a teacher-led presentation. Team members work with partners to read and...

Marian Wright Edelman's 2014 Commencement Speech at Lewis and Clark College serves to inspire young scholars to investigate a problem in their community, to determine why the problem is important, and then to develop a plan for one thing...

Designed for teachers who use Norman Maclean's autobiographical A River Runs Through It, this one-page resource offers discussion question structured using Bloom's Taxonomy.

What makes a good question? Middle schoolers explore the use of questioning through QAR, the question answer response strategy, while reading Where the Red Fern Grows. They learn about the four types of questions: right there, think and...

Accompany a novel study of Hatchet by Gary Paulson with a unit consisting of 16 lessons focused on physical and emotional survival. Reading the story along with a variety of informational texts, scholars compare and contrast reading...

Sense-Plan-Act. Class members practice thinking like a robot using this three-step method. After watching a short video that details how robots operate, class members examine their social networking habits and learn about a strategy to...

Would your ideal science lab be filled with bubbling beakers and zapping Tesla coils? Or would it contain state-of-the-art computer technology and data analysis? Dream big with an innovative lesson that connects math and language arts...

How do people solve problems in healthy ways? Writers explore a topic of interest in their multi-genre writing assignment exploring Zach's Lie. The final resource in a series of seven includes multiple scaffolds and organizers for...

Eight lessons and worksheets comprise a curriculum guide for Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Class members create a timeline that includes world-historical events as well as events in the novel. They analyze the speaking styles of...

A 15-page packet includes detailed plans for three activities related to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. To gather background information, class members research topics and create a newspaper page reporting their findings. After finishing...

After reviewing persuasion techniques, young historians examine how a specific technique was used in the pro- or anti-suffrage messages. They then examine how that same technique is used in modern-day media messages.

To conclude a study of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, class members create illustrated newsletters about Huck's lessons as he journeys down the Mississippi River. Using Microsoft Publisher, pairs copy, save, and import illustrations...

Three quizzes are designed to assess readers' knowledge of events in Octavia E. Butler's Kindred. All questions are fact-based rather than asking readers to infer or interpret the text.

Georgia's law S.B. 202 is at the center of a lesson that asks young scholars to examine what critics say are Georgia's attempts to limit voting access to Black voters. Groups then investigate the voting laws in their own state, as well...

Readers of Lord of the Flies examine the four main symbols William Golding develops in his novel: the island, the conch, the Lord of the Flies effigy, and fire. Partners select one of the major symbols and create an image by adding words...

Readers of  Lord of the Flies hunt down direct and indirect examples of how William Golding brings his characters to life. After instructors guide learners through the process of collecting evidence of these two types of characterization...