In this session, we reviewed the eight Elements of critical thinking in conjunction with the Standards of accuracy, relevance, and precision. The question at issue we addressed: Why would you put forth the effort and perseverance to learn another language? Initial responses included the ideas of traveling and being impressive, also being "forced" as part of high school! However, we then discussed Bobby's projected career as an international business owner. We reasoned that knowing another language would open the base of clients much more broadly. Using the "Element" information, Bobby began to research the most spoken languages in the world, charting them in order with statistics, concluding that he would learn Mandarin. In this process, he discovered unreliable information versus reliable -- realizing that a site ending .edu is much better. Secondly, researching business use language, he changed his mind (good critical thinking to change a conclusion as more information is discovered) -- and decided it would be most beneficial to learn Spanish. His motive is now in line with his career and personal interests, and it is his own reasoned decision to learn Spanish now.
Kate and I had a fun activity of listing at least one word with connotations positive and then negative through the entire alphabet -- written on the board. Each is a "concept" on its own, and considering them in opposition to one another served a few purposes. One, Kate will use some of these to write a character analysis next week that will illustrate a mostly good personality she'll create interacting with a not-so-good character. Two, this activity forced Kate to be very thoughtful as she was striving to think of words that were fitting starting with each letter. Ones she couldn't think of were found in a thesaurus. Then we did a character analysis and watched for more words to add to our list with about a ten minute segment of Despicable Me (she looked up despicable, too!) It is added to the board! Concepts and assumptions were reviewed as they came up naturally during the class and were pointed out.
Today Elle listened to a TedTalk by Matt Cutts on "Try something new for 30 days." She decided on a 30-day challenge for herself and wrote this out on her laptop (setting up MLA format). She will look up two quotes per day for thirty days and track them on her document. I showed her how to inset quotes to her sentences and document them as MLA parenthetical citations. After this we reviewed the critical thinking elements and quickly wrote sentences out on the board under her entrepreneur project to elaborate and think deeply about her business plan. We also reviewed argumentative basics from last week. I then asked Elle to try to make a "motto" for herself. She found examples on the phone. She wrote hers on her whiteboard. (:
Kate reviewed last week's work on argumentative writing -- conclusion and premises. Since she loved my new color-changing nail polish (fascinated!) she wrote a formal statement of logical and persuasive argumentation on the topic to obtain permission to get these herself! Her premises (reasons why) included 1) it's fun 2) less expensive than "dip" 3) she wrote a perfect essay in critical thinking class that even included MLA format. For these reasons, she concluded, Therefore I should get color-changing polish. We reviewed new word concepts: optimist and pessimist. Kate's one page original essay is posted on her bulletin board. It is a descriptive essay using the eight elements of critical thinking. I gave her a cute Boynton picture and she did a times 5 minute free-write describing it. When she could not think of anything else to write, I asked her questions using the eight elements, i.e., purpose, point of view, assumption, etc. For each element she added a sentence. Therefore, she ended up writing more than twice the amount after she didn't know what else to say. This was a lesson on creating original content by using the elements and she can use it in any course for any topic forever!
Charlie reviewed the basics of argumentative writing "conclusion" and "premises." After watching an excepts of the Giver he constructed a statement using the appropriate word choices for the premises to lead into the conclusion: "Since Asher was under orders to "lose" (kill) Jonas, and he found him by flying the plane into the valley, and since they were friends, Asher had a difficult decision. Therefore, Asher helped Jonas by dropping him in the water so he could survive." After constructing this sentence and putting it on the board, he filled in the circle graph of the eight elements of critical thinking, and we used these to discuss the very ending of the film (that we watched next). I questioned him regarding the contrasts with the end of the book, asked him to assess which was better, and why, and the purposes for each medium -- why the difference.
Elle learned the short argumentative terms, premise and conclusion, and created an example of her own to illustrate this. She realized that it is a good method to introduce an essay or pinpoint the purpose of a paper. We watched the beginning of a movie called "Bird Box" -- the beginning is very benign -- and used it for "prediction," "assumption," and "inference." Elle showed great dexterity in using technology to find answers to questions about the Bird Box Challenge that was on twitter that had caused damage and injury to mostly teens who took up the challenge. We talked about how you need to think critically and consider implications before doing any such impulsive thing as to take up a "challenge." She then showed me another "challenge" that had been hurtful to teens with eating soap things used for dishwashers. I am glad that she realizes these things are to be AVOIDED, and her attitude is that no one should do this. Elle also showed great memorization and recall as I stopped the film after the mother had given a long list of requirements to two small children, and had Elle act the mother part to me. Elle is exceptionally good at prediction and questions about possible outcomes (implications).
Kate began a new critical thinking workbook today. The first lesson and worksheet were on short argument, "Distinguishing premises from conclusions." Once she understood the basic idea, she found it to be a way to begin essays by pulling together the main point and strongest evidence. She learned that premises are the reasons behind the point one is making, the persuasive reasoning used -- the why. In conjunction with this, Kate learned that a conclusion is the term used for the point you are arguing for. The worksheet showed an example from Martin Luther King, Jr. The conclusion was that "segregation is morally wrong," and the premise or reason was that it "reduces some persons to the status of things." We discussed segregation and Civil War -- getting all the facts straight and better understood (as a result of the topic of the example). Kate learned two new words: Optimist and pessimist. She said that she is almost always an optimist.
