Thinking
skills are a big focus now in many schools, but very few
teachers can actually define exactly what these skills are,
and how they are going to facilitate them. This page
outlines a number of suggested sets of thinking skills.
CORE THINKING
SKILLS (
http://www.adprima.com/thinkskl.htm
)
This site
suggests that "thinking skills are relatively specific
cognitive operations that can be considered the building
blocks of thinking". The site lists the following skills.
FOCUSING
SKILLS - attending to selected pieces of information and
ignoring others.
1. Defining
problems: clarifying needs, discrepancies, or puzzling
situations.
2. Setting goals: establishing direction and purpose.
INFORMATION
GATHERING SKILLS - bringing to consciousness the
relative data needed for cognitive processing.
3. Observing:
obtaining information through one or more senses.
4. Formulating questions: seeing new information through
inquiry.
REMEMBERING
SKILLS - storing and retrieving information.
5. Encoding:
storing information in long-term memory.
6. Recalling: retrieving information from long-term memory.
ORGANIZING
SKILLS - arranging information so it can be used more
effectively.
7. Comparing:
noting similarities and differences between or among
entities.
8. Classifying: grouping and labelling entities on the basis
of their attributes.
9. Ordering: sequencing entities according to a giver
criterion.
10. Representing: changing the form, but not the substance
of information.
ANALYZING
SKILLS - clarifying existing information by examining
parts and relationships.
11. Identifying
attributes and components: determining characteristics or
the parts of something.
12. Identifying relationships and patterns: recognizing ways
elements are related.
13. Identifying main ideas: identifying the central element;
for example the hierarchy of key ideas in a message or line
of reasoning.
14. Identifying errors: recognizing logical fallacies and
other mistakes and, where possible, correcting them.
GENERATING
SKILLS - producing new information, meaning or ideas.
15. Inferring:
going beyond available information to identify what may
reasonably be true.
16. Predicting: anticipating next events, or the outcome of
a situation.
17. Elaborating: explaining by adding details, examples, or
other relevant information.
INTEGRATING
SKILLS - connecting and combining information.
18. Summarizing:
combining information efficiently into a cohesive statement.
19. Restructuring: changing existing knowledge structures to
incorporate new information.
EVALUATING
SKILLS - assessing the reasonableness and quality of
ideas.
20. Establishing
criteria: setting standards for making judgments.
21. Verifying: confirming the accuracy of claims.
