Raghda Abulnour

The Critical
Thinking Consortium

Mini-Critical Challenge Planning Template

Grade:

Topic/Issue: Selecting an image

State the Critical Challenge:

Select the most relevant image for an article, story, or lesson text.
Identify the Type of Challenge:

Critique the Piece

Judge the Better or the Best
Decode the Puzzle
Re-work the Piece
Design to Specs
Perform to Specs

Explain the Critical Challenge:

In this challenge students will demonstrate a visual understanding of text by selecting the
best, or most relevant, image for text provided (either in a lesson or book or newspaper).
Synopsis of the Critical Challenge:
By drawing together the pieces of the challenge identified so far, craft a paragraph
overview of the critical challenge that will be used to engage students and address the
overall expectations e.g.
Share with students a text and two or three images from a story or a textbook that is
relevant to their age group, grade level and subject. Suggest that the best image is
determined by the highest degree of relevance between the image and text provided.
Read the text with the students line by line (or stop every few lines) and let the students
decide whether these few lines 1) can be visually drawn on image. If yes then 2) let them
see whether it is drawn in one or two or the three images shared with students. If say two
images include the description while the first does not, then eliminate the first and in this
case, it is not the best image. Then read further in the text and stop again. Then ask the
same question on whether this part of text can be visually presented. If no, then continue
reading, but if yes then look back at the remaining two images and see whether it is
interpreted. If no in both, then again continue with the reading, but if yes in one of them,
then eliminate the other. Hence now you have selected the best or closest image.
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Raghda Abulnour
Now provide the students with a text and no image. Allow the students to draw
what they can see from the text. If students cannot draw, and hence differentiating
instruction in accordance to different types of students, then allow them to list the
important parts of the text that can be visually presented in an image. After each student
draws an image or forms the list, take away the text and now provide the students with a
few images (either as a group or individually) and allow them to select the best one which
should be closest to their drawing or their listed points.
We can take this activity a step further. After they select the best image, let them
record it (so number the images maybe) and give them back the text. Allow them to
increase reliability by looking now at the text, their drawing or listed points, the image
they chose, and the other remaining images. So now they can see whether their selected
image is indeed the best or whether they changed their mind after relooking at the text.
This step allows students to improve in the decision-making phase when they decided
what to draw or list and so what they perceived as important information from the text to
be included in the best image. So this extra part increases student critical thinking and
gradually facilitates image selection (for example: which information in the text is
important and which can be filtered, what can be visually represented and what cannot).
So this step also depends on the type of students in class.

Teaching the Tools

Background Knowledge:
Students need to be able to read the text provided easily and to understand it in order to
determine or select the best image. That is why it is important to ensure that the texts and
images provided correlate appropriately with age group, grade level, and subject material
(and sometimes different types of students depending on the class).
Criteria for Judgment:
What criteria will help guide students in their learning and frame their deliberations?
Criteria for best image:
Relevant or applicable.
Engaging
Informative
Contextual
Critical Thinking Vocabulary:
Which terms relating to thinking need to be unpacked with the students in order for them
to understand the challenge and to respond appropriately?

Informative and/or applicable.

Contextual.

Raghda Abulnour
Thinking Strategies:
What thinking strategy(ies) will best assist students in processing the information they
have gathered (see connections, draw plausible conclusion, read between and beyond the
lines).
Inference and decision-making
Sorting and brainstorming.
Habits of Mind:
Identify 1-2 central habits of mind and explain how they will be explicitly addressed
through the critical challenge.

Creativity and meaning making.

Striving for accuracy and precision.