Технології розвитку критичного мислення на уроках англійської мови

                       There are Great Critical Thinking Activities:

Making predictions is a tool that is quite useful in the ESL classroom. You can ask your students to take a guess at what comes next in reading have to think critically, they will be using the language skills they are learning. The next time your students are reading a passage or listening to a segment, hit pause and ask them what they think will come next.

Thinking about both sides of an argument will challenge your students to think beyond their own opinions and beliefs. A simple way to do this is to take a controversial statement and challenge your students to list some reasons in support of the statement as well as some reasons against it. Take the thinking a step further and teach your students how to make a refutation, either spoken or in writing, a skill that is often useful in the academic world.

Attribute Linking—Building Community by Taking Perspectives

Students pair up according to similar physical attributes determined by the facilitator. These include hair color, eye color, hand size, and height. For each attribute, students discuss times when they were discriminated against because of it. They then take on the roles as victim, perpetrator, or bystander and discuss.

Barometer—Taking a Stand on Controversial Issues

When posed with a thought-provoking prompt, students line themselves up along a U-shaped continuum representing where they stand on that issue. The sides of the U are opposite extremes, with the middle being neutral. The teacher starts a discussion by giving equal opportunity for individuals in each area of the continuum to speak about their stand. The students use “I” statements when stating their opinion.

Big Paper—Building a Silent Conversation

Writing (or drawing) and silence are used as tools to slow down thinking and allow for silent reflection, unfiltered. By using silence and writing, students can focus on other viewpoints. This activity uses a driving question, markers, and Big Paper (poster-sized is best). Students work in pairs or threes to have a conversation on the Big Paper.Students can write at will, but it must be done in silence after a reflection on the driving question. This strategy is great for introverts, and provides a ready made visual record of thought for later.

Body Sculpting—Using Theatre to Explore Important Ideas

Students are given time to consider their feelings on a thought-provoking abstract or concrete image. Next, they come up with words that describe their reactions—trapped, free, angry, joyful, etc. They are then paired up and one person is the sculptor, while the other is the “clay.” The sculptor poses the clay into a form that artfully displays the word they wish to portray. Here are some guidelines:

1. Sculptors can either physically mold the “clay” or act as a mirror for them to show the “clay” the position/image they want.
2. Images can be concrete or abstract.
3. Sculptors must treat their clay with gentleness and respect (very important!).
4. There are no wrong answers; whatever image you get is fine.
5. All body sculpting must be done in silence.

Café Conversations

Understanding different viewpoints is a great way to delve deeply into a topic. 5 to 10 students are given character sheets. These might include gender, age, family status (married, single, how many children, etc.), occupation, education level and significant life events. The group is also given a historical event or similar topic.

Students can create identity charts in collaboration with each other to determine their character’s viewpoint. When they can adequately represent their character, what follows is a “cafe conversation.”

Logic Puzzles

Simple logic puzzles require application of logic, reason and creativity to identify the correct answer. Riddles, brain teasers and logic games activate students' creative and critical minds and prepare them for a day of critical inquiry. Write a few brain teasers on the board; students immediately sit and begin to write down their answers. Sample brain teasers might include, "Do they have a Fourth of July in England?", "What is boiled then cooled before being sweetened and soured?" or "How many books can you put in an empty bag?" Include more difficult brain teasers for older students and simpler puzzles for younger students. Invite students to share and debate their answers before revealing the correct answer. See Resource 1 for a comprehensive list of brain teasers and logic puzzles.

Judge and Jury

Evaluation, analysis and judgment are all critical thinking skills that are particularly useful in an English classroom that requires close reading and analytical writing. Invite students to introduce to the class perceived injustices occurring in their school. Students may feel angry over a new dress code, a shortened lunch period or a new discipline policy. The student gives a one-minute summary of the problem and then has two minutes to prepare his best arguments against the infraction. Another student serves as a challenger and has two minutes to prepare her best arguments in support of the policy. The students each have one minute to present arguments. The class then votes on which student presented the best argument. If time permits, allow students to discuss why one set of arguments was more appealing than the other. The student debater who wins the class over receives a prize, such as extra points on an assignment.

Character Critique

Draw from the material used in the classroom to craft opening assignments that stimulate critical thinking. Select a character from the current text and ask students a series of analytical or self-reflective questions about the character. You might ask, "If this character were a student in our classroom, would you want to sit near her? Why or why not?" or "Would this character make a good friend? Partner? Parent? Why or why not?" Questions should require students to evaluate the characteristics of the character and apply them to real-life situations or contexts beyond the context of the book. Students share and debate their responses with the class.

There are  creative ways to work with reading texts: 

EXPAND THE TEXT

With short, simple texts, get students to add an adjective in front of every noun / an adverb to every verb etc. For slightly longer texts - before class write (10) extra clauses or sentences that can be inserted into the text. Write these up in jumbled order on the board and get students to add them in the most appropriate places.

REDUCE THE TEXT

Get students to reduce the text to EXACTLY (100) words OR reduce the total number of sentences by (50%).

RECONSTRUCT THE TEXT

Before class, write a list of key words from the text in jumbled order on a sheet of paper. Make one copy for each group of students.

In class, give out the text to all the students. Get them to read it through. Now ask them to turn over the text. Hand out the jumbled keywords. Ask students to put the keywords back into the correct order . When they get stuck, allow them to reread to the text (but first get them to cover up the jumbled words again.)

When all the students have got the words in the correct order, take the text away. Get students to reconstruct the text (orally or in writing) from the key words.

MATCHING

Before class, get a heavy black pen and cross out the first sentence of each paragraph. (If you downloaded the page off the web, use your word processor to delete the sentences before printing.)

In class, write the missing sentences up in jumbled order on the board and get students to add them back into the text in the correct place.

Note: choosing the first sentence of a paragraph is particularly useful as these often summarize the main idea of the paragraph. Students can use these sentences to help them understand and structure the text.

TRANSFORM THE TEXT

Students must transform the text in some way, for example:

• Retell a story in the first person not the third person

• Retell a story from the perspective of a different character in the story(e.g. from the wolf’s perspective, not from Little Red Riding Hood’s.)

• Present a news story as a TV news item instead of a newspaper item.

DEDUCTION

Copy the text onto a piece of A4 paper. Tear off a column  down the left hand side of the copy and a similar sized column off the right hand side. Photocopy and hand out the remaining “middle” part of the story. Students must work together to deduce the whole story from the bits they have. Hand out the original story for comparison at the end.

TEXT QUIZ

Hand out the chosen text to the class. Give them time to read it, check new words etc. Now get the students in groups to prepare (15) questions about the text which another group will have to answer from memory. Questions should be factual.

When the groups are ready, cover up all copies of the text, then get groups to swap their question sheets and answer each other’s questions. The group that answers the most questions correctly wins.

WORD PARTNERSHIPS

Before class, find (15) useful word partnerships in your chosen text. Write the first word of each partnership down the left-hand side of a piece of paper.

E.g. Solve …………

(Don’t forget that word partnerships can consist of two or three words, and also that sometimes a word is partnered with another one in a completely different part of the text. E.g. “The puzzle, which had baffled experts for well over 20 years, was finally solved by a 12-year-old girl from Ramsgate.”) In class, hand out the text. Allow students time to read and ask questions.

Now get the students to complete the sheet that you prepared by finding the partners for each word. As a follow-up, students can test each other by covering up one of the columns on their sheets and trying to remember the missing word partners.

REACTIONS

Before class, prepare a list of sentences along the following lines:

What I found most interesting about this text was…..

boring

shocking

amusing

irritating

baffling

incredible

etc.

In class, allow students time to read the text and check out any problems. Then ask them to complete all / some of the sentences from your list.

When they have finished, put them in groups to discuss their reactions.

TALK ABOUT THE TEXT

One of the things we often do in real life is tell someone else about a story / news item / magazine article etc that we read.

To do this in class, all you need is a text and a group of students. Get the students to read the text. Now ask them to describe the text and their reactions to it to their partner. Get them to start like this:

“I was reading this (story) the other day and it was really interesting. What it said was…..”

So , we agree that critical thinking activities engage students' logic, rationality and judgment in problem-solving inquiries. English classes benefit from critical thinking activities because the activities activate students' prior knowledge, encourage creative thinking and stress the importance of evidence-based problem solving.