Critical Thinking

Do your high school students think that taking notes during class means writing down everything you say? You can teach them effective note-taking skills that increase their engagement.

The researcher Peter Liljedahl evangelizes for practices that prioritize and stimulate more hard thinking in classrooms.

Used consistently, these strategies can help middle and high school teachers guide students to improve much-needed skills.

This strategy for selecting and teaching word problems guides students to develop their understanding of math concepts.

Too often math students lean on teachers to think for them, but there are some simple ways to guide them to think for themselves.

Solving word problems is tougher than computing with numbers, but elementary teachers can guide students to do the deep thinking involved.

New materials can leave kids in the fog. Here are five metacognitive questions they can use to find their way and become more independent learners.

Educators can help empower middle and high school students to independently manage their growing responsibilities.

Middle and high school teachers can build activities that foster students’ executive functioning skills into their daily routines.

Simple, in-class activities—drawn from recent research—that you can use to cement hard-won student insights.

Push students past simple recall into deeper thought and engagement by adding this short follow-up question to your repertoire.

Teachers can foster deeper learning by providing careful feedback, assigning comparison tasks, and encouraging robust class discussions.

This teacher asked his students what they didn’t like about textbooks and used their responses as a way to have them engage in close reading of primary sources.