Reasoning

Please post your rubrics, models, or activities to include reasoning across the curriculum.

Below are some websites devoted to developing critical thinking in our students:

The Critical Thinking Community

Teachable Moments on issues of the day


 * Ideas for Quadrant D Moments in the Classroom **
 * Excerpt from ICLE’s “Everyday Teaching for Rigor and Relevance: Quadrant D Moments” **
 * **__ Around You __**** – Students relate a learning concept to themselves, the local community, work, or other real-world materials. **
 * **__ At Your Service __**** – Students identify or perform a simple act or service that would benefit individuals, the school, or the neighborhood. **
 * **__ Can You See It Now? __**** – Students translate numbers or concepts into visible, tangible objects to visualize and more deeply understand complex ideas. **
 * **__ Current Events __**** – Students connect content to current events. **
 * **__ Fix It __**** – Students rework a solution, where a student arrived at a wrong answer to a problem, to identify and correct a mistake, an omission, or error in logic. **
 * **__ Future Think __**** – Students make predictions of the future based on current scientific or historical knowledge. **
 * **__ Google It __**** – Students use Internet search engines to answer questions. **
 * **__ How did that Happen? __**** – Students summarize key points from reading, viewing, or presentations and relate them to their lives or future. **
 * **__ Justify Your Position __**** – Students take a position on a real-world issue that impacts someone and justify it with a logical argument and citation of facts. **
 * **__ Learning with Peers __**** – Students work in pairs or small groups for re-teaching or reinforcing learning. **
 * **__ LegoLand __**** – Students create or manipulate objects to represent a concept in a lesson. **
 * **__ Media Circus __**** – Students relate television shows, movies, music, or other media to concepts being learned. **
 * **__ Original Answers __**** – Students arrive at a unique answer to an open-ended problem or create an original way to display knowledge or data. **
 * **__ QuickWrites __**** – Students write in short bursts (1-5 minutes) to pose questions, reflect, discover answers, check for understanding, and stimulate discussion. **
 * **__ Quiz Show __**** – Students design a game show or questions to test peer acquisition and application of knowledge. **
 * **__ Remind Me __**** – Students develop a real-world metaphor for complex content to remember relationships, rules, patterns, or content. **
 * **__ Tell me a Story __**** – Students create fanciful stories to share knowledge, remember an idea, or explain concepts. **
 * **__ What If? __**** – Students analyze previous events or actions and make predictions of what would be different if that event or action had not occurred. **
 * **__ “Why” Questions __**** – Students pose “why” questions on content for inquiry, exploring additional learning, or reflection on why learning is important to their lives or future. **