critical thinking skills for 4th graders

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5 Critical Thinking Skills Every Kid Needs To Learn (And How To Teach Them)

Teach them to thoughtfully question the world around them.

Little kids love to ask questions. “Why is the sky blue?” “Where does the sun go at night?” Their innate curiosity helps them learn more about the world, and it’s key to their development. As they grow older, it’s important to encourage them to keep asking questions and to teach them the right kinds of questions to ask. We call these “critical thinking skills,” and they help kids become thoughtful adults who are able to make informed decisions as they grow older.

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking allows us to examine a subject and develop an informed opinion about it. First, we need to be able to simply understand the information, then we build on that by analyzing, comparing, evaluating, reflecting, and more. Critical thinking is about asking questions, then looking closely at the answers to form conclusions that are backed by provable facts, not just “gut feelings” and opinion.

Critical thinkers tend to question everything, and that can drive teachers and parents a little crazy. The temptation to reply, “Because I said so!” is strong, but when you can, try to provide the reasons behind your answers. We want to raise children who take an active role in the world around them and who nurture curiosity throughout their entire lives.

Key Critical Thinking Skills

So, what are critical thinking skills? There’s no official list, but many people use Bloom’s Taxonomy to help lay out the skills kids should develop as they grow up.

Source: Vanderbilt University

Bloom’s Taxonomy is laid out as a pyramid, with foundational skills at the bottom providing a base for more advanced skills higher up. The lowest phase, “Remember,” doesn’t require much critical thinking. These are the skills kids use when they memorize math facts or world capitals or practice their spelling words. Critical thinking doesn’t begin to creep in until the next steps.

Understanding requires more than memorization. It’s the difference between a child reciting by rote “one times four is four, two times four is eight, three times four is twelve,” versus recognizing that multiplication is the same as adding a number to itself a certain number of times. Schools focus more these days on understanding concepts than they used to; pure memorization has its place, but when a student understands the concept behind something, they can then move on to the next phase.

Application opens up whole worlds to students. Once you realize you can use a concept you’ve already mastered and apply it to other examples, you’ve expanded your learning exponentially. It’s easy to see this in math or science, but it works in all subjects. Kids may memorize sight words to speed up their reading mastery, but it’s learning to apply phonics and other reading skills that allows them to tackle any new word that comes their way.

Analysis is the real leap into advanced critical thinking for most kids. When we analyze something, we don’t take it at face value. Analysis requires us to find facts that stand up to inquiry, even if we don’t like what those facts might mean. We put aside personal feelings or beliefs and explore, examine, research, compare and contrast, draw correlations, organize, experiment, and so much more. We learn to identify primary sources for information, and check into the validity of those sources. Analysis is a skill successful adults must use every day, so it’s something we must help kids learn as early as possible.

Almost at the top of Bloom’s pyramid, evaluation skills let us synthesize all the information we’ve learned, understood, applied, and analyzed, and to use it to support our opinions and decisions. Now we can reflect on the data we’ve gathered and use it to make choices, cast votes, or offer informed opinions. We can evaluate the statements of others too, using these same skills. True evaluation requires us to put aside our own biases and accept that there may be other valid points of view, even if we don’t necessarily agree with them.

In the final phase, we use every one of those previous skills to create something new. This could be a proposal, an essay, a theory, a plan—anything a person assembles that’s unique.

Note: Bloom’s original taxonomy included “synthesis” as opposed to “create,” and it was located between “apply” and “evaluate.” When you synthesize, you put various parts of different ideas together to form a new whole. In 2001, a group of cognitive psychologists removed that term from the taxonomy , replacing it with “create,” but it’s part of the same concept.

How To Teach Critical Thinking

Using critical thinking in your own life is vital, but passing it along to the next generation is just as important. Be sure to focus on analyzing and evaluating, two multifaceted sets of skills that take lots and lots of practice. Start with these 10 Tips for Teaching Kids To Be Awesome Critical Thinkers . Then try these critical thinking activities and games. Finally, try to incorporate some of these 100+ Critical Thinking Questions for Students into your lessons. They’ll help your students develop the skills they need to navigate a world full of conflicting facts and provocative opinions.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

This classic Sesame Street activity is terrific for introducing the ideas of classifying, sorting, and finding relationships. All you need are several different objects (or pictures of objects). Lay them out in front of students, and ask them to decide which one doesn’t belong to the group. Let them be creative: The answer they come up with might not be the one you envisioned, and that’s OK!

The Answer Is …

Post an “answer” and ask kids to come up with the question. For instance, if you’re reading the book Charlotte’s Web , the answer might be “Templeton.” Students could say, “Who helped save Wilbur even though he didn’t really like him?” or “What’s the name of the rat that lived in the barn?” Backwards thinking encourages creativity and requires a good understanding of the subject matter.

Forced Analogies

Practice making connections and seeing relationships with this fun game. Kids write four random words in the corners of a Frayer Model and one more in the middle. The challenge? To link the center word to one of the others by making an analogy. The more far out the analogies, the better!

Learn more: Forced Analogies at The Owl Teacher

Primary Sources

Tired of hearing “I found it on Wikipedia!” when you ask kids where they got their answer? It’s time to take a closer look at primary sources. Show students how to follow a fact back to its original source, whether online or in print. We’ve got 10 terrific American history–based primary source activities to try here.

Science Experiments

Hands-on science experiments and STEM challenges are a surefire way to engage students, and they involve all sorts of critical thinking skills. We’ve got hundreds of experiment ideas for all ages on our STEM pages , starting with 50 Stem Activities To Help Kids Think Outside the Box .

Not the Answer

Multiple-choice questions can be a great way to work on critical thinking. Turn the questions into discussions, asking kids to eliminate wrong answers one by one. This gives them practice analyzing and evaluating, allowing them to make considered choices.

Learn more: Teaching in the Fast Lane

Correlation Tic-Tac-Toe

Here’s a fun way to work on correlation, which is a part of analysis. Show kids a 3 x 3 grid with nine pictures, and ask them to find a way to link three in a row together to get tic-tac-toe. For instance, in the pictures above, you might link together the cracked ground, the landslide, and the tsunami as things that might happen after an earthquake. Take things a step further and discuss the fact that there are other ways those things might have happened (a landslide can be caused by heavy rain, for instance), so correlation doesn’t necessarily prove causation.

Learn more: Critical Thinking Tic-Tac-Toe at The Owl Teacher

Inventions That Changed the World

Explore the chain of cause and effect with this fun thought exercise. Start it off by asking one student to name an invention they believe changed the world. Each student then follows by explaining an effect that invention had on the world and their own lives. Challenge each student to come up with something different.

Learn more: Teaching With a Mountain View

Critical Thinking Games

There are so many board games that help kids learn to question, analyze, examine, make judgments, and more. In fact, pretty much any game that doesn’t leave things entirely up to chance (Sorry, Candy Land) requires players to use critical thinking skills. See one teacher’s favorites at the link below.

Learn more: Miss DeCarbo

This is one of those classic critical thinking activities that really prepares kids for the real world. Assign a topic (or let them choose one). Then give kids time to do some research to find good sources that support their point of view. Finally, let the debate begin! Check out 100 Middle School Debate Topics , 100 High School Debate Topics , and 60 Funny Debate Topics for Kids of All Ages .

How do you teach critical thinking skills in your classroom? Come share your ideas and ask for advice in the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, check out 38 simple ways to integrate social-emotional learning throughout the day ..

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100+ Critical Thinking Questions for Students To Ask About Anything

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Teaching Critical Thinking Skills to Fourth Grade Students Identified as Gifted and Talented

    In this action research study, gifted elementary students benefited from the involvement in critical thinking activities. The gifted education community has frequently discussed the development of our learners’ thinking skills. As an educator of elementary gifted students, I have often been frustrated with the lack of depth I find in my students’ thinking, as well as the lack of challenge they experience in their regular classrooms. My goal for this action research study was to move a group of fourth grade students identified as gifted and talented from being naïve and self absorbed about their thinking to taking ownership of their thoughts. The primary materials used for this study were from The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for Children (Elder, 2002). The study focused on a combination of affective and cognitive skills, and applied the intellectual standards of clarity, accuracy, relevance, logic, and fairmindedness to students’ thinking. Activities that did not use the above materials are not mentioned in this modified text.

    The characters of Selfish Sam, Naïve Nancy, and Fairminded Fran (Elder, 2002) allowed learners to become aware of and understand both positive and negative thinking behaviors in themselves and others. All students commented about personal application of the standards. In addition to understanding each standard, students saw the interrelatedness of the standards. Pre- and post-surveys showed an increased understanding and personal application of the standards.

    More work must be done to help all teachers understand and teach critical thinking skills to their learners. Teachers of gifted students need to create classrooms where critical thought is taught, practiced, and expected. The findings of this study would also suggest elementary classroom teachers, as a whole, are not comfortable with teaching and recognizing the intellectual standards of critical thought. Only when the language and practice of critical thinking are incorporated into daily use, will it become internalized by our young thinkers.

    Since the completion of this action research study, I have continued to use the language of critical thinking in my classroom. I am more aware of the standards and work to incorporate them into my lesson planning. This unit of study will become the initial unit for my fourth grade gifted learners each year and will be incorporated into my fourth and fifth grade lessons.

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Eight Instructional Strategies for Promoting Critical Thinking

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(This is the first post in a three-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom?

This three-part series will explore what critical thinking is, if it can be specifically taught and, if so, how can teachers do so in their classrooms.

Today’s guests are Dara Laws Savage, Patrick Brown, Meg Riordan, Ph.D., and Dr. PJ Caposey. Dara, Patrick, and Meg were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources On Teaching & Learning Critical Thinking In The Classroom .

Current Events

Dara Laws Savage is an English teacher at the Early College High School at Delaware State University, where she serves as a teacher and instructional coach and lead mentor. Dara has been teaching for 25 years (career preparation, English, photography, yearbook, newspaper, and graphic design) and has presented nationally on project-based learning and technology integration:

There is so much going on right now and there is an overload of information for us to process. Did you ever stop to think how our students are processing current events? They see news feeds, hear news reports, and scan photos and posts, but are they truly thinking about what they are hearing and seeing?

I tell my students that my job is not to give them answers but to teach them how to think about what they read and hear. So what is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom? There are just as many definitions of critical thinking as there are people trying to define it. However, the Critical Think Consortium focuses on the tools to create a thinking-based classroom rather than a definition: “Shape the climate to support thinking, create opportunities for thinking, build capacity to think, provide guidance to inform thinking.” Using these four criteria and pairing them with current events, teachers easily create learning spaces that thrive on thinking and keep students engaged.

One successful technique I use is the FIRE Write. Students are given a quote, a paragraph, an excerpt, or a photo from the headlines. Students are asked to F ocus and respond to the selection for three minutes. Next, students are asked to I dentify a phrase or section of the photo and write for two minutes. Third, students are asked to R eframe their response around a specific word, phrase, or section within their previous selection. Finally, students E xchange their thoughts with a classmate. Within the exchange, students also talk about how the selection connects to what we are covering in class.

There was a controversial Pepsi ad in 2017 involving Kylie Jenner and a protest with a police presence. The imagery in the photo was strikingly similar to a photo that went viral with a young lady standing opposite a police line. Using that image from a current event engaged my students and gave them the opportunity to critically think about events of the time.

Here are the two photos and a student response:

F - Focus on both photos and respond for three minutes

In the first picture, you see a strong and courageous black female, bravely standing in front of two officers in protest. She is risking her life to do so. Iesha Evans is simply proving to the world she does NOT mean less because she is black … and yet officers are there to stop her. She did not step down. In the picture below, you see Kendall Jenner handing a police officer a Pepsi. Maybe this wouldn’t be a big deal, except this was Pepsi’s weak, pathetic, and outrageous excuse of a commercial that belittles the whole movement of people fighting for their lives.

I - Identify a word or phrase, underline it, then write about it for two minutes

A white, privileged female in place of a fighting black woman was asking for trouble. A struggle we are continuously fighting every day, and they make a mockery of it. “I know what will work! Here Mr. Police Officer! Drink some Pepsi!” As if. Pepsi made a fool of themselves, and now their already dwindling fan base continues to ever shrink smaller.

R - Reframe your thoughts by choosing a different word, then write about that for one minute

You don’t know privilege until it’s gone. You don’t know privilege while it’s there—but you can and will be made accountable and aware. Don’t use it for evil. You are not stupid. Use it to do something. Kendall could’ve NOT done the commercial. Kendall could’ve released another commercial standing behind a black woman. Anything!

Exchange - Remember to discuss how this connects to our school song project and our previous discussions?

This connects two ways - 1) We want to convey a strong message. Be powerful. Show who we are. And Pepsi definitely tried. … Which leads to the second connection. 2) Not mess up and offend anyone, as had the one alma mater had been linked to black minstrels. We want to be amazing, but we have to be smart and careful and make sure we include everyone who goes to our school and everyone who may go to our school.

As a final step, students read and annotate the full article and compare it to their initial response.

Using current events and critical-thinking strategies like FIRE writing helps create a learning space where thinking is the goal rather than a score on a multiple-choice assessment. Critical-thinking skills can cross over to any of students’ other courses and into life outside the classroom. After all, we as teachers want to help the whole student be successful, and critical thinking is an important part of navigating life after they leave our classrooms.

‘Before-Explore-Explain’

Patrick Brown is the executive director of STEM and CTE for the Fort Zumwalt school district in Missouri and an experienced educator and author :

Planning for critical thinking focuses on teaching the most crucial science concepts, practices, and logical-thinking skills as well as the best use of instructional time. One way to ensure that lessons maintain a focus on critical thinking is to focus on the instructional sequence used to teach.

Explore-before-explain teaching is all about promoting critical thinking for learners to better prepare students for the reality of their world. What having an explore-before-explain mindset means is that in our planning, we prioritize giving students firsthand experiences with data, allow students to construct evidence-based claims that focus on conceptual understanding, and challenge students to discuss and think about the why behind phenomena.

Just think of the critical thinking that has to occur for students to construct a scientific claim. 1) They need the opportunity to collect data, analyze it, and determine how to make sense of what the data may mean. 2) With data in hand, students can begin thinking about the validity and reliability of their experience and information collected. 3) They can consider what differences, if any, they might have if they completed the investigation again. 4) They can scrutinize outlying data points for they may be an artifact of a true difference that merits further exploration of a misstep in the procedure, measuring device, or measurement. All of these intellectual activities help them form more robust understanding and are evidence of their critical thinking.

In explore-before-explain teaching, all of these hard critical-thinking tasks come before teacher explanations of content. Whether we use discovery experiences, problem-based learning, and or inquiry-based activities, strategies that are geared toward helping students construct understanding promote critical thinking because students learn content by doing the practices valued in the field to generate knowledge.

An Issue of Equity

Meg Riordan, Ph.D., is the chief learning officer at The Possible Project, an out-of-school program that collaborates with youth to build entrepreneurial skills and mindsets and provides pathways to careers and long-term economic prosperity. She has been in the field of education for over 25 years as a middle and high school teacher, school coach, college professor, regional director of N.Y.C. Outward Bound Schools, and director of external research with EL Education:

Although critical thinking often defies straightforward definition, most in the education field agree it consists of several components: reasoning, problem-solving, and decisionmaking, plus analysis and evaluation of information, such that multiple sides of an issue can be explored. It also includes dispositions and “the willingness to apply critical-thinking principles, rather than fall back on existing unexamined beliefs, or simply believe what you’re told by authority figures.”

Despite variation in definitions, critical thinking is nonetheless promoted as an essential outcome of students’ learning—we want to see students and adults demonstrate it across all fields, professions, and in their personal lives. Yet there is simultaneously a rationing of opportunities in schools for students of color, students from under-resourced communities, and other historically marginalized groups to deeply learn and practice critical thinking.

For example, many of our most underserved students often spend class time filling out worksheets, promoting high compliance but low engagement, inquiry, critical thinking, or creation of new ideas. At a time in our world when college and careers are critical for participation in society and the global, knowledge-based economy, far too many students struggle within classrooms and schools that reinforce low-expectations and inequity.

If educators aim to prepare all students for an ever-evolving marketplace and develop skills that will be valued no matter what tomorrow’s jobs are, then we must move critical thinking to the forefront of classroom experiences. And educators must design learning to cultivate it.

So, what does that really look like?

Unpack and define critical thinking

To understand critical thinking, educators need to first unpack and define its components. What exactly are we looking for when we speak about reasoning or exploring multiple perspectives on an issue? How does problem-solving show up in English, math, science, art, or other disciplines—and how is it assessed? At Two Rivers, an EL Education school, the faculty identified five constructs of critical thinking, defined each, and created rubrics to generate a shared picture of quality for teachers and students. The rubrics were then adapted across grade levels to indicate students’ learning progressions.

At Avenues World School, critical thinking is one of the Avenues World Elements and is an enduring outcome embedded in students’ early experiences through 12th grade. For instance, a kindergarten student may be expected to “identify cause and effect in familiar contexts,” while an 8th grader should demonstrate the ability to “seek out sufficient evidence before accepting a claim as true,” “identify bias in claims and evidence,” and “reconsider strongly held points of view in light of new evidence.”

When faculty and students embrace a common vision of what critical thinking looks and sounds like and how it is assessed, educators can then explicitly design learning experiences that call for students to employ critical-thinking skills. This kind of work must occur across all schools and programs, especially those serving large numbers of students of color. As Linda Darling-Hammond asserts , “Schools that serve large numbers of students of color are least likely to offer the kind of curriculum needed to ... help students attain the [critical-thinking] skills needed in a knowledge work economy. ”

So, what can it look like to create those kinds of learning experiences?

Designing experiences for critical thinking

After defining a shared understanding of “what” critical thinking is and “how” it shows up across multiple disciplines and grade levels, it is essential to create learning experiences that impel students to cultivate, practice, and apply these skills. There are several levers that offer pathways for teachers to promote critical thinking in lessons:

1.Choose Compelling Topics: Keep it relevant

A key Common Core State Standard asks for students to “write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.” That might not sound exciting or culturally relevant. But a learning experience designed for a 12th grade humanities class engaged learners in a compelling topic— policing in America —to analyze and evaluate multiple texts (including primary sources) and share the reasoning for their perspectives through discussion and writing. Students grappled with ideas and their beliefs and employed deep critical-thinking skills to develop arguments for their claims. Embedding critical-thinking skills in curriculum that students care about and connect with can ignite powerful learning experiences.

2. Make Local Connections: Keep it real

At The Possible Project , an out-of-school-time program designed to promote entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, students in a recent summer online program (modified from in-person due to COVID-19) explored the impact of COVID-19 on their communities and local BIPOC-owned businesses. They learned interviewing skills through a partnership with Everyday Boston , conducted virtual interviews with entrepreneurs, evaluated information from their interviews and local data, and examined their previously held beliefs. They created blog posts and videos to reflect on their learning and consider how their mindsets had changed as a result of the experience. In this way, we can design powerful community-based learning and invite students into productive struggle with multiple perspectives.

3. Create Authentic Projects: Keep it rigorous

At Big Picture Learning schools, students engage in internship-based learning experiences as a central part of their schooling. Their school-based adviser and internship-based mentor support them in developing real-world projects that promote deeper learning and critical-thinking skills. Such authentic experiences teach “young people to be thinkers, to be curious, to get from curiosity to creation … and it helps students design a learning experience that answers their questions, [providing an] opportunity to communicate it to a larger audience—a major indicator of postsecondary success.” Even in a remote environment, we can design projects that ask more of students than rote memorization and that spark critical thinking.

Our call to action is this: As educators, we need to make opportunities for critical thinking available not only to the affluent or those fortunate enough to be placed in advanced courses. The tools are available, let’s use them. Let’s interrogate our current curriculum and design learning experiences that engage all students in real, relevant, and rigorous experiences that require critical thinking and prepare them for promising postsecondary pathways.

Critical Thinking & Student Engagement

Dr. PJ Caposey is an award-winning educator, keynote speaker, consultant, and author of seven books who currently serves as the superintendent of schools for the award-winning Meridian CUSD 223 in northwest Illinois. You can find PJ on most social-media platforms as MCUSDSupe:

When I start my keynote on student engagement, I invite two people up on stage and give them each five paper balls to shoot at a garbage can also conveniently placed on stage. Contestant One shoots their shot, and the audience gives approval. Four out of 5 is a heckuva score. Then just before Contestant Two shoots, I blindfold them and start moving the garbage can back and forth. I usually try to ensure that they can at least make one of their shots. Nobody is successful in this unfair environment.

I thank them and send them back to their seats and then explain that this little activity was akin to student engagement. While we all know we want student engagement, we are shooting at different targets. More importantly, for teachers, it is near impossible for them to hit a target that is moving and that they cannot see.

Within the world of education and particularly as educational leaders, we have failed to simplify what student engagement looks like, and it is impossible to define or articulate what student engagement looks like if we cannot clearly articulate what critical thinking is and looks like in a classroom. Because, simply, without critical thought, there is no engagement.

The good news here is that critical thought has been defined and placed into taxonomies for decades already. This is not something new and not something that needs to be redefined. I am a Bloom’s person, but there is nothing wrong with DOK or some of the other taxonomies, either. To be precise, I am a huge fan of Daggett’s Rigor and Relevance Framework. I have used that as a core element of my practice for years, and it has shaped who I am as an instructional leader.

So, in order to explain critical thought, a teacher or a leader must familiarize themselves with these tried and true taxonomies. Easy, right? Yes, sort of. The issue is not understanding what critical thought is; it is the ability to integrate it into the classrooms. In order to do so, there are a four key steps every educator must take.

• Integrating critical thought/rigor into a lesson does not happen by chance, it happens by design. Planning for critical thought and engagement is much different from planning for a traditional lesson. In order to plan for kids to think critically, you have to provide a base of knowledge and excellent prompts to allow them to explore their own thinking in order to analyze, evaluate, or synthesize information.
• SIDE NOTE – Bloom’s verbs are a great way to start when writing objectives, but true planning will take you deeper than this.

QUESTIONING

• If the questions and prompts given in a classroom have correct answers or if the teacher ends up answering their own questions, the lesson will lack critical thought and rigor.
• Script five questions forcing higher-order thought prior to every lesson. Experienced teachers may not feel they need this, but it helps to create an effective habit.
• If lessons are rigorous and assessments are not, students will do well on their assessments, and that may not be an accurate representation of the knowledge and skills they have mastered. If lessons are easy and assessments are rigorous, the exact opposite will happen. When deciding to increase critical thought, it must happen in all three phases of the game: planning, instruction, and assessment.

TALK TIME / CONTROL

• To increase rigor, the teacher must DO LESS. This feels counterintuitive but is accurate. Rigorous lessons involving tons of critical thought must allow for students to work on their own, collaborate with peers, and connect their ideas. This cannot happen in a silent room except for the teacher talking. In order to increase rigor, decrease talk time and become comfortable with less control. Asking questions and giving prompts that lead to no true correct answer also means less control. This is a tough ask for some teachers. Explained differently, if you assign one assignment and get 30 very similar products, you have most likely assigned a low-rigor recipe. If you assign one assignment and get multiple varied products, then the students have had a chance to think deeply, and you have successfully integrated critical thought into your classroom.

Thanks to Dara, Patrick, Meg, and PJ for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

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Series Sarah Brown Wessling's Visit to Tulare County Schools: Scaffolds for Critical Thinking

Common core State Standards

• ELA:  English Language Arts
• RL:  Reading Standards for Literature K-\x80\x935
• 4:  4th Grade
• 7:  Make connections between the text of a story or drama and a visual or oral presentation of the text, identifying where each version reflects specific descriptions and directions in the text.

Download Common Core State Standards (PDF 1.2 MB)

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Scaffolds for Critical Thinking

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

• Supporting Materials

Thought starters

• How does Ms. Wessling create an environment that encourages curiosity?
• How does this lesson help students make progress toward the Common Core standard of making connections between the story's text and the visual presentation of the text?
• What would you do next to help students continue making progress with this standard?

24 Comments

Emily Hein Oct 5, 2021 9:12am

The lesson on working on the concret to the obstract. This helped them develop concepts to meanings. This skill is challanging for young readers so I thought the box was a great idea to get the kids curious. It also made the classroom have more freedom by being able to guess what is in the box.

Kayla Middleton Oct 16, 2018 4:29pm

wei xiaohong May 28, 2018 7:48am

J Weldon Mar 30, 2018 2:26pm

Vanessa Mejia Mar 10, 2018 7:11pm

Lesson Plans

• Lesson Plan: Scaffolds for Critical Thinking.PDF

Scaffolds for Critical Thinking Transcript

Transcripts

Speaker 1: Hi!

Children: Hi!

Speaker 1: Are your brains ready to go?

Children: Yes!

Speaker: Today I was in a fourth grade classroom, which was a gift because there are these enthusiastic kids who were so excited to learn and also a challenge because I spend nearly all of my time in a high school. It was really interesting for me to think about how to transfer this idea of teaching critical thinking to a fourth grade classroom, to ‘ really ‘ these emerging learners.

Alright friends, I’m going to tell you something. I have this box.

We have two simultaneous purposes going on in the classroom.

Speaker 1: We have adults in the classroom who are a part of this professional learning experience and then we also have the lesson that’s going on.

There were some things in it; there might be some clues to what we are supposed to learn.

The lesson today was on being able to get students to work from moving to the concrete to the abstract. In fourth grade terms, what that meant was that I wanted them to be able to see the difference between things in what we see in what we read, and then the ideas that they represent. As I designed this lesson and I really thought about what our younger, emerging critical thinkers need, I wanted to make sure that I created an environment that really privileged the disposition of curiosity.

Do you think you could help me out?

Children: Yes.

Speaker 1: That’s where the idea for this box came in.

So, I thought I should just take them out.

I would pull these different components of the lesson out of there, I think it created a natural umbrella of inquiry.

What do you think is going to happen?

I think it just kind of sets the tone for the culture or the environment that we want to have in which the teacher is releasing the responsibility of learning to the student.

This was one of the things that was in here. I don’t know, what do you think about those?

Speaker 2: I think it’s a type of beans.

Speaker 1: Does anybody else think that? Yeah? You thought it was a type of bean? I don’t know if it has anything to do with these, though, but there were these pictures that showed up in this box of mine. Should I give these to you too?

Children: Yeah.

Speaker 1: I don’t know.

Speaker 3: I know one of these, you have to put it in your teeth.

Speaker 4: Yeah, it makes your teeth straight.

Speaker 1: Okay, who has an idea? Yes, what do you think?

Speaker 5: We were saying that it might be to straighten out your teeth.

Speaker 1: Interesting. Should we write that down here? We’re going to see if we can add anything to our ideas about why these two things showed up on your desks.

Speaker 6: We can be taught how to eat healthy food?

Speaker 1: Okay, what do you think?

Speaker 7: Maybe we’re going to learn about how cause and effect, like if you eat these what is it going to do to the braces?

Speaker 1: That’s a really good question.

One of the things that happens when you’re kind of in this mode of inquiry is that you kind of leave some things dangling, really.

Speaker 8: [Wait, do you produce this?] its this something about like how it grows?

Speaker 1: Wow!

I knew that I would ask them to draw some conclusions about lima beans and braces and I knew that it wasn’t going to have this nice little bow tied around that understanding, and that was okay, but we needed some anchors for the lesson.

I think we should hang onto all of these really good idea. Can we leave these on your desk for a minute? You think that would be okay?

Speaker 1: Here’s this other thing: there are these words.

Next, we got into this concept attainment component where I put these “yes” examples and “no” examples of the difference between things and ideas.

Video games, Clash of Clans. Does anybody play Clash of Clans in here? Okay, here is the green example. Video games equals frustration. Do you get frustrated because you’re not getting to the next level?

Speaker 1: You know, I could touch Clash of Clans. Couldn’t I point to it on the screen?

Speaker 1: Can I touch frustration?

Children: No.

Speaker 1: Why not?

[crosstalk]

Speaker 9: Because it’s an idea.

Speaker 10: It’s a feeling.

Speaker 1: Because it’s a feeling, it’s something in your head.

It took us a while to work through those, but that was also really important and, again, really governed by questions.

Do you think you’re pretty good at this now?

Speaker 1: I think you are too, so this is what I’m going to do: I’m going to give you your own piece of blue, okay? Then I’m going to put one up on the board and I’m going to ask you to make a red and a green one for me. Can you do that?

Speaker 1: Okay, here it is. Pet. If you were going to do one that was red you would do pet equals ‘ what would you write afterwards? Everybody do it on their blue piece of paper.

I was hoping that the one that I saved until the end about the pet would be the most relevant to them, which is why I saved it until the end because they actually had to finish the card.

Speaker 10: I have “fluffy.”

Speaker 1: Is that the name of a pet? No? Could it be the name of a pet?

Speaker 1: Okay, so if we’re going to do a green one for pet, it’s kind of tricky.

We are asking them to really practice a more difficult cognitive task, I think it’s really important to make the content more accessible or more relevant.

Before you write this down, what are you going to have to ask yourself? How does your pet ,

Speaker 11: How does your pet feel?

Speaker 1: Not how does your pet feel when you touch it, but how does it make you feel.

By creating this more inductive methodology, they were doing the transfer as they were figuring it out. I actually felt like even though it’s a slower process, it’s a more sure process.

Speaker 12: Happy?

Speaker 1: Happy! Can we touch happy?

Speaker 1: No. Does it work? It does!

Once we practiced, then we took that and we wanted to apply it to a shared text.

Okay, this is called “A Bad Case of Stripes.” Camilla Cream loved lima beans but she never ate them. All of her friends hated lima beans and she wanted to fit in.

I chose to use that book because I wanted to find texts that really had a strong example of an object that represented an idea.

Why would she not eat the lima beans then?

Speaker 13: Because they would make fun of her.

Speaker 1: Oh, does that ever happen?

Speaker 1: “The next day was a disaster. ‘What are we going to do?’ cried Mrs. Cream, ‘It just keeps getting worse and worse!’ She began to sob.”

Speaker 14: Another thing they tell us, “Turn back into a normal kid!”

Speaker 1: What do you think about that word, “normal”? What is normal? Is there a normal?

Speaker 15: Like, to be yourself?

Speaker 1: Oh.

The lima beans in this book definitely represent an idea, and you don’t get it until the second to last page in the book.

“’Yes,’ said the old woman, ‘I knew the real you was in there somewhere.’ She patted Camilla on the head.” But even when we got to that second to last page, they had worked so hard that I as determined that I was not going to tell them what it meant.

If lima beans are over here, lima beans are what? Lima beans are…

Children: Ideas.

Speaker 1: Yes, what’s the idea?

Speaker 16: Someone who eats lima beans?

Speaker 1: To eat them…

Speaker 17: Some where there?

Speaker 1: Closer, I’m going to read it one more time. Listen. Okay? Listen for an idea, something you can’t touch.

I just kind of kept reading it, the same sentence maybe 3 or 4 times, because it was theirs. That was theirs to get, not mine to give.

“’Yes,’ said the old woman, ‘I knew the real you was in there somewhere.’” What?

Speaker 18: The real you?

Speaker 1: The real you! Do you think that’s what the lima bean are about?

Speaker 1: I think you’re right.

As soon as students are the ones who actually can offer those concepts, those ideas, we just know that they’ve got it.

Red or green?

Children: Red.

Speaker 1: Red, yes. And what’s the green?

Speaker 19: To be yourself.

Speaker 1: To be yourself. Is that an idea?

Speaker 1: So, once we did this kind of as a shared text, I wanted to move on to make it something a little more individual.

We’re going to look for what those braces mean.

I brought in an excerpt from a graphic novel called “Smile.”

“’That’s it,’ says the dentist, ‘braces work through subtle pressure.’”

There were these moments where the author starts talking about these braces.

Are there any words we can’t touch on this page?

Speaker 20: Power?

Speaker 1: Power, can you circle that word? Should I put power in green or red?

Children: Red. Green!

Speaker 1: We start to realize that this is something that’s very tangible, these braces, but they also seem to be talking about these ideas that go with them. I started to generate a list on the board.

Speaker 22: Problems?

Speaker 1: They’re problems.

Even that was helpful in reiterating this idea about the difference between concept and something tangible.

Have you ever decided you needed a break from a friend? Yeah? Did it ever feel like a little pressure?

One of the things that happens to me that I know that it happens to all kinds of teachers, is that you run out of time. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened today.

Okay, let’s do this: can you do this one thing for me?

I took 30 seconds maybe , a minute , and just asked them what do these braces tell us about friendship?

Speaker 23: Tight?

Speaker 1: They sometimes get tight?

I did give a little bit of wait time, just enough until I could see some of their eyes kind of clicking and they started to see how braces and friendship were connected to each other.

But in the end, sometimes you can do what?

Speaker 24: Smile?

Speaker 1: If I had finished “Smile,” the lesson would end with them doing some writing. With them trying to discern , on their own , how these braces connect to friendship as it is presented in this graphic novel.

You guys are wonderful!

I’m a high school teacher and so I don’t get into elementary classrooms that often so this was a really wonderful opportunity to think about how these skills go throughout the grade bands. Because sometimes we may think, “You can’t teach critical thinking to young kids” and I think those kids just showed that they’re just as ready as anyone else to do it.

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Teaching Literary Analysis

Guide students through the five steps of understanding and writing literary analysis: choosing and focusing a topic, gathering, presenting and analyzing textual evidence, and concluding.

Literary analysis is a vital stage in the development of students' critical thinking skills. Bloom's Taxonomy illustrates that analysis should come at the fourth level, right after comprehension and application. What this means is that students must be able to understand and describe the text before they are able to analyze its elements.

Teaching literary analysis is often a daunting and overwhelming task. After all, it is essentially guiding students slowly through the process of critical thinking and understanding literature. That’s not a simple undertaking. Most importantly, with so many ways to go about doing it, where to begin?

To guide students toward discovering literature all on their own, the steps of this process need to be introduced in a simplified form. It's very important for the student to understand that literary analysis is indeed a process where there is no right or wrong answer. This empowers students to be passionate about their topics and, most importantly, encourages them to look beyond the words on the page.

1. Choose a Topic

Some students need guidance when choosing a topic, but others have ideas that they would like to explore. Topics can be divided into the main literary elements:

• Literary devices

2. Focus the Topic

Here is where many students will need to do a lot of brainstorming, outlining, and specific thinking about the element on which they would like to focus.

• The brainstorming process involves mapping out the different aspects of the chosen element.
• Make a choice by narrowing down the selection and focusing the ideas.
• Come up with a question to answer (thesis statement): What do you want to explore about the topic? Why does it stand out to you?
• Answer the "why" question. Instead of letting students simply describe the text, "why" pushes them to analyze and even synthesize. This aspect is vital to student understanding, as most of the time a teacher is able to identify a relevant thesis related to modern-day issues and concepts. Here is where real-world application, analysis, and synthesis can begin to form in this piece of writing.

3. Gather Textual Evidence

Collecting material to answer or support your question is often a time-consuming stage, because most of the close reading will occur here. It's important for students to know that they're allowed to research the topic or text before starting to write. Many students feel that they should not be using Google or Wikipedia to research their texts. Here is where the teacher can have an honest discussion about digital citizenship, and how to tell credible academic sources from non-credible ones.

Show students that close reading and gathering evidence doesn't have to be a mundane, one-dimensional task.

• Identify common themes, repetitions, and patterns.
• Categorize elements, tone, and narrative style.
• Highlight characterization, setting, and foreshadowing.
• Label character types, symbols, and metaphors.

4. Introduce, Evidence, Analyze

Learning through writing and literary analysis happens through stages (see Bloom's Taxonomy ). At this stage of writing, students have already accomplished remembering, understanding, and applying. Next comes analysis.

Students should introduce their point in one or two clear topic sentences. Next, it's important to provide evidence that supports the main topic in order to convince the reader of the stated point of view. There are a few ways students can add their evidence.

• Quotation: When providing evidence word for word from a primary or secondary source, students should be reminded to use quotation marks only if the words have not been altered.
• Summary: Students summarize a piece of evidence by restating it in a shorter form using their own words.
• Paraphrase: Students explain a piece of evidence using their own words.

At this stage, it's important to use the lesson as a reminder to cite and give credit for words and ideas that belong to others. A conversation with the class about academic honesty is very important to help them understand intellectual property. This conversation will also prepare them for honesty and ethics in the real or academic world.

This critical stage is often a learning curve for many students. It's important that the teacher helps them distinguish between descriptive writing and analytical writing. Descriptive writing answers the "who," "what," "where," and "how" questions. It often tends to summarize the text. Analytical writing , however, answers to the "why" question. When students consider the question, "Why is this point important?", it pushes them beyond mere description into ideas that are convincing, argumentative, and defend a position.

5. Conclusion

A strong conclusion outlines the main ideas of the essay, but it also works to provide a solution to a real-life problem. Students can focus on concluding with what they hope to get out of their analysis, or provide closure to the topic. Most importantly, students should seize the conclusion as an opportunity to provide their own opinion and reflection about their process of analyzing the text. The self-reflection here would be a vital key for teachers to assess the writing process and a great opportunity to provide essential feedback to the student.

Please share your own experiences in teaching students about literary analysis.

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55 Challenging Word Problems for 4th Graders

• Elementary Education

Introduction:

Word problems are an essential part of the 4th-grade mathematics curriculum. They help students develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills beyond calculations, allowing them to apply math concepts to real-life situations. In this article, we’ll explore 55 challenging word problems designed specifically for 4th graders. These problems cover various topics, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and more!

1. Jane has 12 cookies. Her friend Amy gives her 8 more cookies. How many cookies does Jane have in total?

2. Tommy collects baseball cards. He has 100 cards in his collection and wants to buy 35 more to complete his set. How many cards will he have altogether?

3. A bookstore has 250 books on its shelves which are divided into fiction and non-fiction categories. If there are twice as many fiction books as non-fiction books, how many non-fiction books are there?

4. John’s dad gives him a $10 allowance each week on Thursday. If he saves all his money from Thursday to Sunday, how much money does John save in a month with four Thursdays?

5. Sarah bought a pack of pencils with 20 pencils in it. She gave some away to her friends and had only 5 left afterward. How many pencils did she give away?

6. There are 40 students in a class separated equally into four groups for group work projects. How many students are there in each group?

7. A bakery prepared 48 muffins in the morning and sold out by lunchtime. In the afternoon, they made three times as many muffins as they did in the morning. How many muffins were made in the afternoon?

8. Jenny plays on a soccer team with eight other players on weekdays only for practice except Wednesday’s break day when there is a training session, and she never misses a practice. How many total practices will Jenny attend in August if the month starts on Tuesday?

9. Billy’s book has 120 pages. He reads 15 pages per day on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. How many days will it take Billy to finish reading the book?

10. A rope that is 90 meters long is cut into three equal pieces. What is the length of each piece?

11. Grant has five times more marbles than his brother, who has six marbles. How many marbles does Grant have?

12. Mary needs to buy 15 apples for a recipe. She buys them in packs of three, priced at $1 per pack. How much does she spend on apples?

(Note: Here are only 12 of the 55 challenging word problems to provide as an example.)

Conclusion:

The 55 Challenging Word Problems for 4th Graders are designed to improve students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills while reinforcing essential mathematical concepts. By working through these problems, students will become more confident in their ability to solve complex, real-world situations using mathematics. Encourage students to practice these types of challenges regularly to help them build essential skills for future success!

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85 Fun Critical Thinking Questions for Kids & Teens

Have you ever thought about using fun questions to practice critical thinking?

Students may need a little guidance to think their way through questions that lack straightforward answers.

But it is that process that is important!

How the Right Questions Encourage Critical Thinking

Every parent knows how natural it is for children to ask questions. 

It should be encouraged. After all, asking questions helps with critical thinking.

As they grow older, however, training them to answer questions can be equally beneficial.

Posing questions that encourage kids to analyze, compare, and evaluate information can help them develop their ability to think critically about tough topics in the future. 

Of course, critical thinking questions for kids need to be age-appropriate—even better if you can mix a little fun into it!

That’s what I hope to help you with today. I’ve organized the questions below into three different ages groups:

• Upper elementary
• Middle school
• High school 

Get a Question-Based Critical Thinking Exercise—Free!

Introduce critical thinking gently & easily with thought-provoking exercises.

Upper Elementary

Students in upper elementary grades can be reluctant to put themselves out there, especially with answers that seem weird. 

In some cases, such hesitancy is actually fear of differing from their peers (and a barrier to critical thinking ). 

But that’s exactly why it’s important to practice answering ambiguous questions. 

We want our children to stand firm for their beliefs—not cave to peer pressure. 

Additionally, students may feel uneasy about answering serious questions, uncertain of tackling “big” problems. 

However, with careful use of creative questions for kids, it’s possible to engage even the most reluctant children in this age group. 

The idea is to simply get them interested in the conversation and questions asked.

If you have an especially reserved student, try starting with the funny critical thinking questions. 

Humor is a natural icebreaker that can make critical thinking questions more lighthearted and enjoyable. 

Of course, most younger kids just like to be silly, so playing upon that can keep them active and engaged.

With that said, here are some great questions to get you started:

1. Someone gives you a penguin. You can’t sell it or give it away. What do you do with it?

2. What would it be like if people could fly?

3. If animals could talk, what question would you ask? 

4. If you were ice cream, what kind would you be and why?

5. Do you want to travel back in time? If yes, how far back would you go? If no, why not?

6. What could you invent that would help your family? 

7. If you could stay up all night, what would you do?

8. What does the man on the moon do during the day?

9. What makes something weird or normal? 

10. Can you describe the tastes “salty” and “sweet” without using those words?

11. What does it feel like to ride a rollercoaster?

12. What makes a joke funny?

13. What two items would you take if you knew you would be stranded on an island and why?

14. Do you have a favorite way of laughing?

15. What noise makes you cringe and cover your ears? Why?

16. If you could be the parent for the day, what would you do?

17. If you could jump into your favorite movie and change the outcome, which one would you pick and why?

18. If you could be invisible for a day, what would you do?

19. What makes a day “perfect”?

20. If you owned a store, what kind of products would you sell?

21. If your parents were your age, would you be friends with them?

22. Would you still like your favorite food if it tasted the same as always, but now had an awful smell?

23. What would you do if you forgot to put your shoes on before leaving home?

24. Who would you be if you were a cartoon character?

25. How many hot dogs do you think you could eat in one sitting?

26. If you could breathe under water, what would you explore?

27. At what age do you think you stop being a kid?

28. If you had springs in your legs, what would you be able to do?

29. Can you describe the color blue to someone if they’re blind?

Middle School

At this point, students start to acquire more complex skills and are able to form their own conclusions based on the information they’re given. 

However, we can’t expect deep philosophical debates with 12 and 13 year olds. 

That said, as parent-teachers, we can certainly begin using more challenging questions to help them examine and rationalize their thought processes. 

Browse the fun critical thinking questions below for students in this age range. 

You might be surprised to see how receptive middle school kids can be to such thought-provoking (yet still fun) questions .

30. What would happen if it really did rain cats and dogs?

31. What does it mean to be lucky?

32. If you woke up in the middle of a dream, where would you be?

33. Is it ever okay to lie? Why or why not?

34. If you were solely responsible for creating laws, what one law would you make?

35. What makes a person a good friend?

36. What do you think is the most important skill you can take into adulthood?

37. If you had to give up lunch or dinner, which would you choose? Why?

38. How much money would you need to be considered rich?

39. If you knew you wouldn’t get caught, would you cheat on a test?

40. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would that be?

41. What is your greatest strength? How is that an asset?

42. If you had an opportunity to visit the International Space Station, would you do it?

43. Is it better to keep the peace or speak your mind?

44. Imagine yourself as your favorite animal. How would you spend your day?

45. Would you be friends with someone who didn’t have the same values as you?

46. How much screen time do you think is too much?

47. Can you describe your favorite color without naming it?

48. If you suddenly became blind, would you see things differently?

49. Would you ever go skydiving?

50. Describe the time you were the happiest in your life. Why did this make you happy?

51. If you had a million dollars, what would you do?

52. If you had to move to a new city, would you change how you present yourself to others?

53. What do you need to do in order to be famous?

54. If you could rewrite the ending of your favorite book or movie, what changes would you make?

55. How would you tackle a huge goal?

56. How would you sell ice to an eskimo in Alaska successfully?

57. What makes you unique?

High School

Critical thinking takes on an entirely different role once students reach high school. 

At this age, they have a greater sense of right and wrong (and what makes things so) as well as a better understanding of the world’s challenges.

Guiding teens to delve deeper and contemplate such things is an important part of developing their reasoning and critical thinking skills. 

Whether it’s fun questions about hypothetical superpowers or tough critical thinking questions about life, older teens typically have what it takes to think their way to a logical conclusion . 

Of course, use your discernment as you choose discussion topics, but here are some questions to help get you started:

58. How can you avoid [common problem] in the future?

59. Do you think it’s okay to take a life in order to save 5, 10, 20 or more people?

60. If you could go back and give your younger self advice, what would it be?

61. Is it better to give or receive a gift?

62. How important is it to be financially secure? Why?

63. If it was up to you, what one rule would you change in your family?

64. What would you do if a group of friends wanted to do something that you thought was a bad idea?

65. How do you know that something is a fact rather than an opinion?

66. What would it take to get you to change your mind?

67. What’s the most important thing in your life?

68. If money were of no concern, what job would you choose and why?

69. How do you know if you’re happy?

70. Do you think euthanasia is moral?

71. What is something you can do today that you weren’t able to do a year ago?

72. Is social media a good thing or not?

73. Is it right to keep animals in a zoo?

74. How does your attitude affect your abilities?

75. What would you do if you found out a friend was doing something dangerous?

76. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Why?

77. What will life on Earth look like in 50 years?

78. Which is more important, ending world hunger or global warming?

79. Is it a good idea to lower the voting age to 16? Why or why not?

80. If the electrical power went out today, how would you cook if using wood wasn’t an option?

81. If you could magically transport yourself to any other place, where would that be and why?

82. When should teenagers be able to stay out all night?

83. Does the number zero actually exist?

84. What defines a generous person?

85. Does an influential person influence everyone?

Feel free to print out these fun critical thinking questions and incorporate them into your homeschool week!

will your children recognize truth?

About the author.

Jordan Mitchell

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Common Core and The Critical Thinking Co.

The skills and concepts taught in our products are the result of our surveys of state and national educational standards. We will continue to avoid any topic in any set of standards that is overtly political. We firmly believe it is not our place to attempt to influence the politics or values of any student. Most Common Core Standards are already found in various state standards, but the list of Common Core Standards is not complete. Since a large number of states (45) have signed on to Common Core Standards, The Critical Thinking Co. will now include Common Core Standards in its broad survey of state and national standards to determine the skills and concepts taught in each grade level subject, but we will not base our products solely on any one set of standards. Our products are written with longevity in mind, considering the tried and true practices of teaching children to read and think for themselves. Those of you who have trusted us in the past can rely on us to continue to teach beyond the standards in the future. Please help us spread the word.

Michael O. Baker President, The Critical Thinking Co.

Critical thinking definition

Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics.

Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought.

However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential.

People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like:

• Developing technical and problem-solving skills
• Engaging in more active listening
• Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs
• Seeking out more diversity of thought
• Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc.

Is critical thinking useful in writing?

Critical thinking can help in planning your paper and making it more concise, but it's not obvious at first. We carefully pinpointed some the questions you should ask yourself when boosting critical thinking in writing:

• What information should be included?
• Which information resources should the author look to?
• What degree of technical knowledge should the report assume its audience has?
• What is the most effective way to show information?
• How should the report be organized?
• How should it be designed?
• What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have?

Usage of critical thinking comes down not only to the outline of your paper, it also begs the question: How can we use critical thinking solving problems in our writing's topic?

Let's say, you have a Powerpoint on how critical thinking can reduce poverty in the United States. You'll primarily have to define critical thinking for the viewers, as well as use a lot of critical thinking questions and synonyms to get them to be familiar with your methods and start the thinking process behind it.

Are there any services that can help me use more critical thinking?

We understand that it's difficult to learn how to use critical thinking more effectively in just one article, but our service is here to help.

We are a team specializing in writing essays and other assignments for college students and all other types of customers who need a helping hand in its making. We cover a great range of topics, offer perfect quality work, always deliver on time and aim to leave our customers completely satisfied with what they ordered.

The ordering process is fully online, and it goes as follows:

• Select the topic and the deadline of your essay.
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• Select your prefered payment type, sit back and relax!

With lots of experience on the market, professionally degreed essay writers , online 24/7 customer support and incredibly low prices, you won't find a service offering a better deal than ours.

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