Our students become powerful learners when they master specific critical thinking skills.
Whatever critical issue you study, practice the art of critical thinking by applying our critical skills matrix to any visual stimulus: graph, chart, video, audio, map, cartoon, or infographic.
Share our critical skills matrix with your students, as a hard copy (printout) or digital template which they will complete based on their daily class starter or other visual stimuli. And print out or hard copy a large version of our critical skills matrix onto a poster board or whiteboard. We are creating a large poster version of the critical skills matrix which teachers can order and post in their classroom.
This critical skills matrix was created for AP Government and Politics but could be modified to use in any of the following content areas:
Civics
Comparative Government
Psych
US History
World History
European History
Economics
Human Geography
Back of the Page Extension
Want to extend student learning a step further?
Here are some more critical skills for students to practice.
Argumentation - Write an argumentative essay about this topic, state your opinion and support it with data/reason/facts/logic. Be persuasive (not to you) to others.
Critical Action - Create and enact an action extension on this topic. What could you do about this + what will you do about it? Choose from our list of critical actions.
Presentation - take the topic and the information you gleaned from the visual class starter as the starting point to writing a script for a one minute presentation on this topic. This presentation could be in person or online.
Creation - Make something creative reacting to this visual. A short list of creative reactions includes: create a rap, musical composition, poem, video, prezi, children’s book, dance, animation, SOCK PUPPET SHOW, blog, tumblr, movement, skit, sculpture, piece of visual art, song, or create your own creative creation idea to show or perform in class.
