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 * What is Critical Thinking?**

By critical thinking or higher level thinking we mean cognitive skills, attitudes, and actions that help students succeed in school and in life.

Literacy tools valued in our classrooms are reflection, writing, and discussion about content that is essential in our disciplines. When students are asked to think for themselves and are not merely reporting somebody else's ideas, they are engaged in problem solving and making sense of the curricular content.

Critical thinking is intellectual engagement and confidence in using higher order thinking such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Bloom's taxonomy). The higher level thinking skills cutting across all the disciplines include the ability and willingness to pose questions and construct arguments using evidence, logical reasoning, and the vocabulary of the discipline. Critical thinkers are able to consider issues from multiple perspectives and cope with ambiguity and conflicting ideas, challenge another's opinion or viewpoint/solution to a problem by using interpretive skills, and the reasoning of the discipline. Critical thinkers use "language and thought to gain knowledge, share it and reason with it. We do this when we read, write and use symbols and signs that permeate our society." (Judith Langer)

