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Welcome Fellow Teachers!
If you are like me, you are always looking for effective strategies to help our students develop critical and analytical thinking skills. I will post various strategies and tools here
as an additional resource.
Feel free to email me if you have any questions or would like any assistance!
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Paul's Reasoning Model
Paul's Reasoning Model is a wonderful tool to encourage critical and analytical thinking about an issue.
Teachers can use this model to help them adjust their questions and tasks. Using this model helps students reason through situations and issues , write persuasively, and aids in depth and complexity by aiding the students in looking at issues through multiple perspectives, examining potential consequences, examining inferences and assumptions, and prompting students to justify their stand.
This model could also be used in Math as well! Instead of asking: "Joe invested $1,000 in stock in January. When he sold it in December, the price was up 12% from his purchase price. What was his profit on this stock?" which only requires calculation, you could instead ask: "Which would you rather choose? a) 80% profit in year 1 and 50% loss in year 2 or b) 5% profit in year 1 and 5% profit in year 2. Explain the implications and consequences of each. Show your work." This type of question requires a deeper understanding of the concept on multiple levels.