Golub, Jeff Ed.Activities to Promote Critical Thinking Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1986.

Summary of major points of interest for you

More than anything, at the high school level, English class has at its roots the promotion of critical thinking. Analyzing, evaluating, assessing, valuing, differentiating&emdash;all are skills of upper level coursework. Some basic avenues of critical thinking are opened in elementary school, but its mainstay is at secondary and collegiate levels. Virtually every lesson should have a wide range of skill levels built into it.

While this book was divided in activities for writing, reading, speaking and listening activities, literature-related and speaking and writing activities, I could see several other patterns to organize it. The links between the lessons were vague and I wanted the book to flow much easier. I guess I felt the organization too simple-minded for a book about critical thinking.

I did find some intriguing chapters, however. "Justice is a Nike T-shirt" was a clever charting out of the parts and then translating those parts metaphorically. It is billed as an ESL lesson but I can see its use in a regular classroom also to lead into analogy writing The chapter on writing a thesis statement presented a lengthy process and unfamiliar terms that appears to be more confusing than clarifying. I did find validation in the chapters on logic study through advertising. My seniors sort out the logic of the ads they find, tracing down the real sales pitch behind the buy-this, buy-that outright line.

Implications for your teaching and/or writing

A curriculum scope and sequence should reflect the increasing skill levels and varieties of thinking tactics. One particular area where I see this to be true is the study of the research paper/documented paper. Many schools continue to assign a research report at the freshmen level in high school. Students have been writing reports for almost six years. (My children started a research report in third grade.) For five/six years the teachers have been varying the same theme: "Go out, gather information, and regurgitate it." Students aren't called upon to evaluate the information, just reorganize it and, oh, be sure you don't copy it, but I won't check too closely."

I've always believed in the essay format for high schoolers as a means of teaching them to hold an opinion and support it with sound examples. While I am not ready to squelch the creative and imaginative forces at work within them, I do care that students begin identifying personal beliefs and reasons for those beliefs as something other than the fact that Mommy or Daddy believes the same.

Therefore the research paper differs from the research report by its purpose being to support an opinion, rather than to provide information. Freshmen through seniors should progressively embark on more complex forms of research to refine their opinions, to hone their methods of support. Recognizing that a source may be wrong and that the student may indeed have a better idea than the expert is something I look forward to.

How this book might interest others

Some intriguing ideas are presented in the text. However, the haphazard arrangement of the activities would be a challenge to find if one were not going to use the ideas immediately. For example, elementary lessons are inserted with college lessons which requires a switch in gears in expectations. An index of techniques would be useful to aid the reader beyond the table of contents.