A teacher offers six suggestions for giving students opportunities to exercise their commonsense thinking skills. This allows the teacher to ask rather than tell, listen rather than talk, and allows the children to provide for themselves. (MT)

A description of the development of three-valued logic includes construction of truth tables. (MK)

The ideas in this workbook for stimulating children's creative thinking are presented as integral parts of ten stories about a boy named Dudley Bond (a distant relative of a very famous spy), his friend Max (a professional bear), and his cousin Maybelle. They find their imaginations stretched by a backyard scientist-inventor who knows dozens of…

This technical report has two purposes. One purpose is to present an end product of a multi-year research investigation into the cognitive skills involved in performing intelligence analysis. The product is a "Handbook for Strategic Intelligence Analysis" developed for the United States Army Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center…

The development of the ability to identify unstated assumptions in arguments should begin in the kindergarten and elementary school if a high level of proficiency is eventually to be reached in sizing up assertions. A clear thinker needs to make sure that propositions are clear by making unstated assumptions explicit. Since children commonly use…

A game of noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) is used to motivate some mathematical activities. Several "starter" questions for activities are included. (MK)

Reviews selected research, widely-used commercial tests, and recent literature on critical thinking. States that evaluation of critical thinking processes should encompass more than simple tests. Concludes with six guidelines for evaluating critical thinking. (JDH)

Several common errors reflecting difficulties in probabilistic reasoning are identified, relating to ambiguity, previous outcomes, sampling, unusual events, and estimating. Knowledge of these mistakes and interpretations may help mathematics teachers understand the thought processes of their students. (MNS)

Children need more than activities to help them see that the relationship expressed in a formula is true. Giving them the underlying principles will contribute to better comprehension, retention, and transfer. (MNS)

Together with other publications in this series, this handbook addresses the issue of humanizing education. Specifically, discussion focuses on the role of critical thinking and reasoning in the educational process. Part one outlines reasons, requirements, and methods for teaching critical thinking and reasoning and connects critical thinking with…

Reports the efforts of the California Assessment Program (CAP) to interject critical thinking items into its new statewide social studies tests. Provides definitions of the critical thinking skills tested by the 8th grade social studies CAP test, and lists 100 critical thinking skills vocabulary words. (JDH)

This newsletter, published eight times during the academic year, is intended for elementary teachers interested in open education. The newsletter includes descriptions of actual classroom projects, discussions of teaching techniques, and sources of curriculum and instructional materials. This issue contains a description of several sets of logic…

This guide discusses the need for decision making expertise, and the steps to attain it. First, human beings are forever encountering the necessity to make choices, because they are constantly striving to adapt to their environment and to co-exist with others, Second there is an expectation that individuals will be independent. Third,…

This teaching guide is designed to develop thinking skills of intermediate elementary school children by using the concept of a shopping center. Thinking skills defined in the guide are observing, recalling, noticing differences and similarities, ordering, grouping, concept labeling, classifying, concept testing, inferring causes and effects,…

This booklet introduces elementary school teachers to the methodology, climate, aims, and objectives necessary for the teaching of philosophical thinking to grade schoolers. The methodology casts the teacher as a facilitator whose primary task is stimulating children to reason about their own problems. The discussion process with hints and guides…