How do you align critical thinking skills with national standards?

1 Define critical thinking skills

The first step is to define what critical thinking skills are and why they are important. Critical thinking skills are the cognitive abilities that enable students to apply logic, reasoning, and evidence to various situations and tasks. They include skills such as asking questions, identifying assumptions, finding connections, drawing conclusions, and communicating effectively. Critical thinking skills are important because they help students develop deeper understanding, creativity, and independence. They also prepare them for the challenges and opportunities of the future.

2 Identify critical thinking standards

The next step is to identify the critical thinking standards that are relevant to your subject and grade level. These are the learning goals or outcomes that describe what students should be able to do or demonstrate in terms of critical thinking. You can find these standards in the national frameworks, such as the CCSS or the NGSS, or in your state or district guidelines. For example, the CCSS for English Language Arts include standards for reading, writing, speaking, and listening that require students to use critical thinking skills. The NGSS for Science include practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas that involve critical thinking skills.

3 Design critical thinking activities

The third step is to design critical thinking activities that align with the standards and engage your students. These learning experiences or tasks should require students to use critical thinking skills in order to achieve the standards. Strategies for designing such activities include providing open-ended questions or prompts that challenge students to think beyond the obvious, using real-world scenarios or problems that connect to students' interests and experiences, encouraging inquiry and exploration that allow students to investigate and discover new information, incorporating multiple perspectives or sources that expose students to different viewpoints and evidence, facilitating collaboration and discussion that foster students' communication and social skills, as well as offering feedback and reflection that support students' self-assessment and improvement.

4 Assess critical thinking skills

Assessing critical thinking skills is the fourth step in measuring your students' progress and achievement. To collect and analyze evidence of their critical thinking skills, you can employ several strategies, such as creating rubrics or checklists that define the criteria and levels of critical thinking skills. Performance-based assessments or portfolios are also useful for showcasing students' products or processes of critical thinking. Additionally, observations or interviews can capture students' behaviors or thoughts related to critical thinking, while formative or summative assessments can provide feedback or grades on their critical thinking skills.

5 Enhance critical thinking culture

The final step is to enhance a critical thinking culture that supports student growth and development. This is the environment or climate that you create and maintain in your classroom and school which values and promotes critical thinking skills. To do this, you can use strategies such as modeling your own thinking and learning, celebrating your students' efforts and accomplishments, providing resources and opportunities for their exploration, and building a community of teachers, parents, and stakeholders. All these actions will help to enrich and extend your students' learning.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?