Encouraging Students to Extend Their Thinking

Encouraging Students to Extend Their Thinking

By: Rachael Davis

There are many components of and rationale for teaching independent, creative, critical thinking. Critical thinking is part of Bloom’s Taxonomy. When students are asked to think critically, they are being asked to use what they know and have learned to answer certain questions. This requires them to think about what their answer is going to be and why it is so. Starting at the third level of Bloom’s Taxonomy, students begin to apply what they know. As they go on, they begin to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate not only what they are being asked, but also the world around them.
Students have been asked to do this their whole entire life; it is not new to them. The only thing that may be new is how a teacher would phrase the question. Students are asked to think critically because the teacher does not want his or her students to be like a computer and just spit out the answers. They want their students to understand why they chose the answer that they did. Teachers want their students to become lifelong learners and to think analytically throughout their lives.

Stimulating independent, creative, and critical thinking is important. Students can use their knowledge from other subjects to answer questions about a certain subject. Creative thought can be described as a young learner pretending a banana is a telephone. The student understands the shape of a telephone and sees it in the banana. Another way to describe this would be learning about measurements and applying this knowledge to cooking. A third way to apply previous knowledge could be when trying to figure out the meaning of a word. The student could use knowledge of the root in the word to find out what the word could mean. The student is being creative, having fun, and learning at the same time.