Critical thinking helps learners analyse new information and solve difficult problems. It\u2019s the key to long term educational success.<\/p>\n
When I help my students prepare for their exams, parents often ask me: \u2018Why can\u2019t my child learn from their mistakes?\u2019 This is a great question, and understanding the answer makes it clear why critical thinking is so important to students.<\/p>\n
Often, children are overwhelmed with classes, homework and tests. When it\u2019s time to prepare for their exams, they take practice papers and memorise the corrections to the questions they get wrong. However, they don\u2019t understand why they got things wrongs. Therefore, when faced with a slightly different question, they will make the same mistake again.<\/p>\n
In Hong Kong\u2019s fast-paced education system, being able to think critically and analyse<\/em> rather than memorise<\/em> makes study-time more productive, and it also leads to broader improvements in terms of the ability to learn new things, make stronger inferences, and get better grades. A great way to improve critical thinking is through games. I play these with my students of all ages, and you can try them at home to help your child improve as well:<\/p>\n Game #1: Guess Who?<\/strong> Preparation: Game Instructions: Reflection Tips: Game #2: Letter Scramble<\/strong> Preparation: Game Instructions: Reflection Tips: i-Learner has two dedicated courses to teach critical thinking: Critical Reading and Writing<\/a> (for K3-S3) and Applied Critical Thinking<\/a> (for S4+).These courses prepare young learners for the challenges of deeper thinking and lead to long term success.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Critical thinking helps learners analyse new information and solve difficult problems. It\u2019s the key to long term educational success. When I help my students prepare for their exams, parents often ask me: \u2018Why can\u2019t my child learn from their mistakes?\u2019 This is a great question, and understanding the answer makes it clear why critical thinking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":13825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13824"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13828,"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13824\/revisions\/13828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www23.i-learner.com.hk\/studiowebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMaterials needed: card\/paper, a pen<\/p>\n
\nWrite a noun on each card \u2013 choose simple words for younger learners, such as \u2018ice cream\u2019, \u2018dolphin\u2019 and \u2018flower\u2019, and choose more abstract concepts for older ones, such as \u2018love\u2019, \u2018culture\u2019 and \u2018beauty\u2019.<\/p>\n
\n1. Player A takes a card and looks at it without showing it to players B, C, D etc.
\n2. Each player can ask player A five yes or no questions.
\n3. Player A can give up to five extra hints.
\n4. Each player has three chances to guess the noun on player A\u2019s card.<\/p>\n
\nAsk questions after the game to improve reflection:
\n1. Which role did you prefer \u2013 the person who guessed or the person who gave hints?
\n2. Can you think of some tips to perform better in each role?
\n3. What does this exercise teach you about asking questions?<\/p>\n
\nMaterials needed: letter cards, or pen and paper to create these<\/p>\n
\nCreate three sets of letter cards (you will need three copies of each letter of the alphabet)<\/p>\n
\n1. Place all cards facing down on the table.
\n2. Each player draws 20 cards randomly.
\n3. Use the letter cards to form words that connect to each other in a grid (like in Scrabble). Words can read left to right horizontally, or top to bottom vertically.
\n4. The winner is the person who uses all their letter cards first. Alternatively, you can play so that the winner is the person who creates the most words or the person who creates the longest word.<\/p>\n
\nAsk questions after the game to improve reflection:
\n1. Did you create a system to sort the letters into words (for example: tackling more difficult consonants such as \u2018z\u2019 and \u2018x\u2019 first)?
\n2. How did the differences between how a winner was determined affect how you formed words (for example: when playing so that the winner has the longest word, you might make the word \u2018dangerous\u2019, but when the winner has the most words, you might make \u2018danger\u2019 and \u2018us\u2019)?<\/p>\n