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Show Students need careful thought By BETTY CONDIE Because schools have focused more intently upon basics in recent years, fewer and fewer students have been exhibiting the higher skills we sometimes call "critical thinking." Higher-order thinking skills are cultivated in classrooms and homes where youngsters participate parti-cipate in extended discussion, writing, rewriting, and debate. Many believe good thinkers are fast thinkers, but research contradicts contra-dicts these notions. In fact, good thinkers and problem-solvers have a great desire for accuracy and may require more time to come up with the correct solution. Good problem-solvers will break a problem down and analyze it, while weaker students follow a "one-shot" approach to problem-solving. One way to encourage thinking is "thinking aloud problem-solving." problem-solving." Teachers use the method this way: After giving a problem, the teacher breaks students up into two-person teams with one assigned as problem-solver and one as listener. The problem-solver problem-solver must resolve the problem by reading and thinking aloud, drawing draw-ing diagrams, and making thinking visible. The listener listens for strategies and errors. He or she doesn't correct the errors, only asks for more detailed explanations. explana-tions. The teacher, meanwhile, circulates cir-culates among the pairs, keeping students on the task and asking probing questions, such as these: -"I'm not saying your answer is right or wrong, but tell me how you got it, so I understand the information informa-tion and steps you used." "Read this sentence, word, phrase, paragraph, mathematical symbol, or graph carefully again and tell me what it means." "Have you solved a problem or answered a question like this one before?" Have children break down complex com-plex tasks into parts. This technique techni-que assists in writing skills, where students must have the analytical ability to understand relationships between ideas, think of new ideas, organize the ideas, then write. |