Professional Documents
Culture Documents
4/13/2015
University of Lethbridge
Alex Kathol
Thank you to everyone at Westmount School for taking me in and making me feel welcome! You
have all been a wonderful support, and I have truly felt like a staff member over the last four
months.
This is meant to be a short resource for the teachers at Westmount school, and any other
teachers interested in implementing critical thinking in their classrooms. Hopefully this helps
bring critical thinking into the classroom, in a fun and easy manner. Enjoy!
-Alex Kathol
Question
How can critical thinking be integrated into engaging brain breaks and energizers, used in
elementary classrooms?
Summary
The keyword in defining critical thinking is the term criteria. Therefore, we must teach students
to understand and develop criteria, before they can begin to consciously think critically. While
students naturally think critically, teaching them to apply their nature skills to their school work
can be a challenge. There are a number of ways critical thinking can be taught, but specifically
this project focuses on developing critical thinking skills through adapted brain break; thus,
critical breaks. The adaptations of the breaks are intended to help students develop their natural
critical thinking skills and use them in an academic setting. Overall, these integrated breaks will
provide students with a fun and engaging way to learn and apply critical think strategies; in
addition, these breaks will serve their original purpose of providing students a break from sitting
and content.
Brain breaks and energizers can be a powerful tool for classroom teachers when students need
refocusing, review, or even reward! Brain breaks and energizers can often be adapted to fit
curriculum content or class ability, which can make them a welcomed tool in the classroom.
Such adaptability also makes these tools perfect to critical thinking integration!
Rationale
Westmount School has set a focus on teaching critical thinking skills and strategies crosscurricular. Teachers and staff have received instruction and professional develop on how to use
critical thinking when teaching curriculum content. By providing opportunities for additional
exposure to critical thinking strategies, students may further develop critical thinking skills.
This project was completed as a part of Alex Kathols internship requirements, in collaboration
with Ann Cheek.
Data/experience was collected from k-6 elementary classrooms at Westmount school.
Possible Applications
ELA
Tips:
- Have 5 Ws posters up for students to reference.
-Make sure students are aware of how to be
respectful during debates and presentations.
- It is important to retain the fun and competitive
elements of the game.
-Have students move around the room, to separate
areas for each side, to get them up and moving.
Story Zoom
Story Zoom
Guess Who/Where
TC2 Workshop/Discussion
Math
Social
Science
Social/Science
ELA
Writing Prompts
Book inquiry (looking at the book
cover)
General
Dictionary Deception
Line Up!
Have students line up using a specific criteria
such as age (use day and month, not just year),
height, alphabetically by middle name, hair
length, etc.
General
Find it Fast
A leader or teacher offers a trait, question, or
character, and students must quickly find an object
that reflects the prompt. Students must then explain
how/why their object reflects or connects to the
prompt.
Tips:
ELA
General
General
General
Summary
Over the course of my final teaching internship have adapted popular classroom brain breaks to include
elements of critical thinking. Many of these activities are versatile and can be used in a variety of age
groups and subjects.
The main element of critical thinking that has been used to adapt the brain breaks is criteria. By adding
criteria, students are able to evaluate, create and apply during the critical break activities. By teaching
students about criteria, natural critical thinking skills will be further developed. Critical breaks offer a
chance for students to get out of their desks, interact with each other, and have fun, all while applying and
developing critical thinking skills.
Tips
After a variety of classroom observations the following has been discerned in regards to the critical
breaks:
Many of activities need to be implemented in small group settings. Small groups allow for better
classroom management of the students during the activities, as well for frequent formative
assessment of understanding and skills.
Setting the criteria of the activity as a class before beginning the activity often results in a greater
understanding and performance by students. This is applicable to almost every activity in every
subject.
Frequent use of the activities in the classroom often helps develop versatility for activities within
subjects.
The critical breaks often serve as a good transition between subjects or activities.
Additional
During the process of development, I had the opportunity to work with Roland Case from TC2. He
showed interest in the topic of my project and provided guidance for formatting and data collection.
Furthermore, he provided me with an opportunity to have my finished project published with the
company TC2 (Critical Thinking Consortium. As of recently, the publishing staff from TC2 have been in
contact with me about where and how my work will be published and any edits that need to be made. This
will be a work in progress but it is a very exciting and rewarding opportunity to have my work recognized
by a well-established critical thinking organization. Most likely, my project will be published under the
online resource series, on the TC2 website.
Resources