Other
Critical Thinking Secrets: What Is Systems Thinking?
There are various approaches to solving problems that require us to analyze and interpret data. However, complex problems can require different perspectives to work upon and different elements that altogether play a crucial role in...
Lumen Learning
Lumen: Analysis: What Is Analysis?
This lesson focuses on analysis including defining analysis and listing the essential skills of analysis.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Book Sorting: Using Observation and Comprehension
Critical thinking, comprehension and analysis skills are the focus of this physical activity. Good beginning to teaching different ways of looking at things.
Other
Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility: Teachable Moment
Authors provide thoughtful lessons on current events of the day that encourage social responsibility and critical thinking. Lesson plans are divided into elementary, middle and high School. Past lessons on important events are archived.
Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education, Stevens Institute of Technology
Ciese: Air Pollution: What's the Solution?
Outdoor air pollution poses a major threat to human health and threatens the ozone layer. Students will examine real time weather data in this extensive unit to learn how air quality is measured, its health impact on at-risk populations,...
Cyberbee
Cyberbee: Photo Analysis Guide
This site is a guide to help students analyze visual media. Further research questions included.
Books in the Classroom
Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site: Looking Critically at Picture Books
This site describes several ideas and activities to use with picture books and intermediate/middle school age students. Specific title to use are also given.
Cyberbee
Cyberbee: Who Dunnit?
If you are a crime scene investigation (CSI) fan, then you will love this site! You get to be the detective by examining the evidence, viewing the crime scene, dusting for fingerprints, interviewing the suspects, and solving the crime.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: It Doesn't Have to End That Way
Literary response and prediction are the focus of this lesson plan. Knowing story structure is an important skill for literary analysis, and this gives teachers a way to help students develop this skill. Includes links to web resources,...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: What Makes Poetry? Exploring Line Breaks
This lesson explains how analyzing poetry is a many-layered process. This lesson introduces the special characteristics of poetry and leads young scholars through a look at how poems are structured and why. Includes links to poems and...
University of Canterbury
University of Canterbury: Cs Unplugged
A collection of free learning activities that teach computer science through games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around. The activities introduce students to computational thinking through concepts such...
Other
Aventis Learning Group: Systems Thinking: The What, Why, When and How
Systems thinking is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts interrelate and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems. It is particularly useful in addressing...
Beacon Learning Center
Beacon Learning Center: Push Ups
This is a tutorial on line graphs including when, how, and why one might choose to use them and how to interpret the data when it is complete. This one is to reach a goal for the number of push ups needed to win the Presidential Fitness...
PBS
Pbs News Hour: Responding to Quotes and Aphorisms
The objective of this lesson plan is to teach students about responding to quotes and aphorisms. This site features a lesson plan with detailed information.
Hopelink
Hopelink: Reading Lesson Idea: Fact or Opinion?
In this lesson plan, students must learn to recognize the differences between fact and opinion.
PBS
Pbs: Culture Shock: Huck Finn in Context
This site features information on themes from Huck Finn. You will find activities and discussion questions to accompany the different sections.
Other
Univ. Of Mississippi: Critical Approaches to Literature
Here are nine common critical approaches to the study of literature based on X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia's Literature: An Introductionto Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Someone a Letter
Through the vast online resources available from EDSITEment, students can read the correspondence of the famous, the infamous and the ordinary, some of whom lived through extraordinary times. Use these fascinating letters as a starting...
Other
Science Notebooks
Using science notebooks can be a boon for teachers looking for ways to bolster critical thinking, writing, analysis and scientific knowledge. This site offers examples, answers frequently asked questions and includes resources for teachers.
ArtsNow
Arts Now Learning: Mona Mesa: What Is Your Opinion? [Pdf]
In this lesson, 1st graders look at a print of "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo DaVinci and talk about what they see, searching for visual clues to help them form an opinion. They discuss the importance of portrait paintings during the...
ArtsNow
Arts Now Learning: Module K: Shapes
For this series of STEAM activities, students will discover the concepts of geometry through shape exploration and the creation of choreographic sequences. Another activity in this module will allow students to identify shapes by...
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Sti Lesson 10: Interpretation and Meaning
Using the lyrics, music and video of a selected song (example used here is 'One' by the Irish group U2), students will explore the ways in which words, music and visual images interact to create meaning. Students will analyze the...
University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow: Critical Reviews
This site is designed to be used by psychology students at the university level, but it provides helpful instruction for anyone writing critical reviews of non-fiction. Instruction includes everything from how to be critical to...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Critical Reading as a Learning Strategy
This tutorial focuses on critical reading using a downloadable PowerPoint presentation, "Critical Reading 101," which includes separating fact from opinion, 6 propaganda techniques, and 6 common fallacies in reasoning. Also provided is...