How To Engage Students with the 9 Traits of Critical Thinking

This on-demand webinar shows teachers how to engage students using digital tools to develop the 9 Traits of Critical Thinking. The participant guide, video for viewing on-demand, and supporting content are provided and free for teachers. We’re excited you’re here!

For starters, download the deck to follow along.

At Mentoring Minds, we believe critical thinking is fundamental to standards mastery. It’s important for teachers and students to develop a common language and understanding of critical thinking, so that thinking becomes visible.

Through years of research and expertise, we identified common characteristics of skillful thinkers and developed the framework of the 9 Traits of Critical Thinking:

In each section, we’ll identify development prompts and facilitation strategies.We’ll also talk about digital tools that develop and support the trait.

Development Prompts

How do you show appreciation for different perspectives?
Are you willing to utilize different ways to find a solution?

Facilitation Strategies

Have students generate a variety of problem-solving strategies for a given situation.
Design activities or scenarios that require students to practice flexibility and shift or change their thinking.

Digital Tools to Develop + Support the Trait: Flipgrid (featured)

Development Prompts

Do you show appreciation for the talents and skills of others?
Do you test ideas for reasonableness and practicality?

Facilitation Strategies

Design opportunities that require students to interact with others and that promote interdependent learning.
Teach students to listen actively and to seek consensus.

Digital Tools to Develop + Support the Trait: Lino (featured)

Development Prompts

How might you apply new learning in day-to-day life?
How do you use prior knowledge to avoid missteps?

Facilitation Strategies

Provide activities that require the application of prior knowledge or experience as data sources or processes to support, explain, or solve new challenges.
Present new tasks in which students refer to past learning to demonstrate application of prior experiences.

Digital Tools to Develop + Support the Trait: Google Trends (featured)

Development Prompts

What goals have you set to improve your learning?
How do you know you’re on the right track?

Facilitation Strategies

Provide prompts that promote reflection and guide students to self-monitor performance that results in improvement.
Teach students to examine thinking and become aware of what and how they are thinking.

Digital Tools to Develop + Support the Trait: VoiceThread (featured)

Development Prompts

Do you seek opportunities to expand your knowledge?
Do you view problems and conflicts as opportunities to learn?

Facilitation Strategies

Model a flexible mindset to promote personal investment in topics by encouraging conversation, exploration, and opinions.
Ask open-ended questions that challenge students’ intellect and encourage students to delve deeper into their own shared responses.

Digital Tools to Develop + Support the Trait: Google Earth (featured)

Development Prompts

Do you probe deeply to find root causes or to determine value?
Do you ask “what if” questions to generate multiple possibilities?

Facilitation Strategies

Encourage students to generate and frame thoughtful questions for analyzing a topic—emphasize quality, not quantity.
Challenge students to organize information to deepen insight by discovering patterns, trends, and connections to form conclusions.

Digital Tools to Develop + Support the Trait: New York Times (featured)

Development Prompts

Do you demonstrate your learning in different ways?
Do you evaluate the effects of your ideas?

Facilitation Strategies

Place students in situations in which answers or solutions are not obvious.
Encourage students to take intellectual or physical risks and push beyond their perceived limits.

Digital Tools to Develop + Support the Trait: Magnetic Poetry (featured)

Development Prompts

What strategies do you use to remain focused?
Do you stop and think before taking action?

Facilitation Strategies

Encourage students to demonstrate a systematic method for analyzing or solving problems.
Direct students to distinguish between productive and nonproductive ideas and to justify the reasoning behind each.

Digital Tools to Develop + Support the Trait: Reading activity (featured)

Development Prompts

Do you rethink your plan when barriers prevent a solution?
How do you show appreciation for different perspectives?

Facilitation Strategies

Have students generate a variety of problem-solving strategies for a given situation.
Design activities or scenarios that require students to practice flexibility and shift or change their thinking.

Digital Tools to Develop + Support the Trait: Panyee FC Video (featured)

Thanks for participating in our webinar, and for exploring this additional content! You can find more tested and proven ideas for developing the 9 traits using technology here. Drop us a line at [email protected] to let us know what you find most helpful, or if you have other ideas to add to the list.