Understand How Good Thinkers Use Critical Thinking Skills

The Habits of Mind hold a purpose to better understand how ‘good thinkers’ use critical thinking skills to better comprehend and then act on the knowledge they know versus just having comprehension. Habit of Mind refers to understanding how to appropriately respond toward confrontation and difficulties when the answer may be problematic to identify. When people are involved in dichotomies thinking, predicaments, or reservations about a situation or interaction with others, often time’s responses happen that have most likely happened before. The individual is using patterns and prior knowledge from previous behaviors and situations to help them identify the best way to resolve the current dilemma. People use their own experiences, values, inclination,

These can be taught to children as an effective approach to learning, problem solving, life skills development, insight, and strategic reasoning. The habits included not only support student thinking but also enhancing student learning. Persisting is habit one and helps students’ analyze problems and identify ways on how to solve them. Habit two is called, managing impulsivity, this helps students envision a goal before they begin on their journey. Habit three, listening to others—with understanding and empathy, is an important habit to teach not only for primary ages but sometimes adults need reminders as well, good listeners done only listen, but also try and understand what the other person is trying to say. Habit four, thinking flexibly, this allows for students to shift their perception and look at it through new or different outlooks. Habit five, metacognition, or thinking about our thinking helps students to identify what it is they know and what they don’t know. Many teachers can use KWL or other charts to help students identify what it is they are thinking about when it comes to their own learning. Habit six, striving for accuracy and precision, this is something we all have engraved in to our brains, checking our work and the double and triple checking again. Not only does this make students know their work is good, it is also something they can be proud of. Questioning and posing problems is habit seven and uses metacognition and helps students to ask the difficult questions when it comes to what they know and don’t know. Applying past knowledge to new situations is habit eight and this habit is important for learners to be able to continue to learn and problem solve on their own. Habit nine, Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision, it can be difficult to explain to someone what it is we need. This is why students learn to support their needs with evidence,