Exploration and Critical Thinking

Spontaneous Problem of the day: Name things that are hidden.
Boundary Breaker of the day: Is being gifted right side-up or upside-down?
Brain stretch practice: Analogies

We focused today on qualities of critical thinkers.  We discovered that a critical thinker needs to...

• Be fair
• Be accurate
• Be clear
• Be relevant
• Be logical

We used videos from the Children's Guide to Critical Thinking to highlight different types of thinkers...

• Naive Nancy- Doesn't care about thinking, follows the crowd, takes the easy road
• Selfish Sam- Uses thinking to manipulate others and get his way
• Fair-minded Fran- Thinks to understand and solve problems, considers others

Students were able to take some notes and share examples that helped them realize the benefits of practicing critical thinking.

We also engaged more with our year-long theme, Exploration.  We read the book, Why Explore by Susan Lendroth and students brainstormed and discussed reasons why people explore and how there is an innate explorer in all of us.

Students got to use our new Nearpod accounts to participate in our interactive lesson that got them started on their "Where I'm From" poems.  They are modeling their writing off the poem of the same name by George Ella Lyon.  I am hoping to be able to share some completed poems on our blog next week!

Lastly, students took their strength assessments as a prerequisite for beginning to interact with our Thrively online content.