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National Health Museum
Access Excellence: Integrating Critical Thinking Skills
This site from Access Excellence explores how, as an educator, you can incorporate critical thinking skills into the classroom. Content focuses on how to cover content so that students can grasp information, engage with the teacher, read...
Lumen Learning
Lumen: Success Skills: Critical Thinking
This lesson focuses on critical thinking including a definition, examples, a video of critical thinking in action, logic in critical thinking, questions a critical thinker asks, guidelines for critical thinking, problem-solving, and...
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)
Ascd: Building Literacy in Social Studies: Ch 1: Reading Social Studies Texts
Article provides excellent tips and strategies for building comprehension and critical thinking skills in Social Studies. It describes some of the challenges students have with reading and understanding their textbooks.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: What Makes Poetry? Exploring Line Breaks
This lesson explains how analyzing poetry is a many-layered process. This lesson introduces the special characteristics of poetry and leads students through a look at how poems are structured and why. Includes links to poems and web...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Id, Ego, and Superego in Dr. Seuss's "The Cat in the Hat"
Contains plans for seven lessons that use Dr. Seuss's "The Cat in the Hat" to teach the literary elements of plot, theme, and character to high school students. It also teaches about psychoanalytic criticism concepts such as the Id, Ego,...
University of Toronto (Canada)
University of Toronto: Critical Reading Towards Critical Writing
Aimed particularly towards writing about non-fiction, this site describes ways to think about what you read so you can write more clearly. Focuses on analyzing the "ways of thinking" that an author uses so you can evaluate the validity...
Lumen Learning
Lumen: Rhetorical Reading: Strategies for Active Reading
This lesson focuses on strategies for active reading such as annotating your texts, reading multiple times, and using your prior knowledge.
Other
Ncrel: Reading Strategies: Before, During, and After [Pdf]
This page provides a detailed chart to aid students' understanding of texts. It goes through the steps of pre-reading, during reading, and after reading, outlining what students should be thinking about as they interact with a text. This...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: The History Behind Song Lyrics
Critical listening, research and historical information are all part of the material in this multi-disciplinary lesson.
Other
Learning Enrichment:reading Skills in the Social Studies
Discussion of the critical reading skills needed in Social Studies, although the skills discussed can apply to a variety of areas. This is part of a larger site containing numerous lesson plans for Social Studies, and this page is really...
NPR: National Public Radio
Npr: Fake or Real? How to Self Check the News and Get the Facts
Read a story on Facebook. Read the headline and think it's too good to be true, but it looks like it's from a news site. Experts offer tips to help sniff out fact from fake. One of today's greatest challenges in a media bombarded culture.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Considering a Feminist Perspective
This lesson plan explores issues surrounding understanding perspective and the power of opinion. Included in the lesson plan is an overview, practice, objectives, resources, preparation, and more.
Other
Cuesta College: Interpreting What You Read
This site from Cuesta College provides both in-depth definitions of fact and opinion, and several clear examples of each.
Department of Defense
Do Dea: Improve Your Study Skills
Having trouble studying for tests or comprehending new material? This in-depth guide provides a multitude of ways to help you acquire reading and critical thinking skills necessary for understanding new material.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Reading, Writing, and Sounder
The activities included in this lesson plan require the reading of William Armstrong's Sounder. This technology-based lesson fosters critical thinking and includes journal writing, student-led discussions with another class via video...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Someone a Letter
Through the vast online resources available from EDSITEment, students can read the correspondence of the famous, the infamous and the ordinary, some of whom lived through extraordinary times. Use these fascinating letters as a starting...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Can You Solve the Locker Riddle?
Your rich, eccentric uncle just passed away, and you and your 99 nasty relatives have been invited to the reading of his will. He wanted to leave all of his money to you, but he knew that if he did, your relatives would pester you...
Scholastic
Scholastic: Fairytale Homes
Students will have a chance to show their understanding of their favorite fairy tales by building homes for the characters.