Critical thinkers are very important in today's scenario. It is almost becoming essential to being a critical thinker for a successful life, especially in dynamic and diverse environments where nothing is constant. Hence, it becomes really imperative to develop critical thinking skills in children from a young age. Best schools in India understand the importance of critical thinking and ensure it is provided to students through a well-designed hands-on curriculum. In order to inculcate critical thinking skills for kids, it's important to start as early as kindergarten.
Let’s take sneak peak at 7 Critical Thinking Skills. 1. Identify the Problem: To begin with, you must be able to identify the problem. It also includes understanding various aspects and situations. It also ap-plies to identifying when there is no problem, the benefits, what is working, and why. 2. Encourage Agreement and Disagreement If you child is able to have an opinion about something he/she agrees or disagrees with with reasoning is a sign that your child is thinking critically. Please note that if your child simply agrees or disagrees doesn’t mean he/she I thinking critically. For thinking to be properly critical, one needs to disagree in the right way. You need to encourage your child to give reasons or examples that show why they agree or disagree with something. 3. Ask Questions Being inquisitive is an important trait even if all are not naturally curious. It is a skill that can be worked upon and polished over a period of time. Just start asking questions and keep wonder why something is in a certain way and what all can be the alternate scenarios? Once the child start asking open-ended questions you will be able to infuse curiosity. 4. Research Research is an important concept when trying to persuade some-one or even being curious about something. It helps to develop a thinking mind using both the right and left parts of the brain. With adequate research, one can persuade, understand facts and figures and get an unbiased answer. To improve your research skills use your mind to crack situations through finding, reading, comparing etc. 5. Encourage your Child to open up To help your child develop critical thinking skills, get into a practice of questioning them about their thoughts, wishes and opinions. There are four simple ways to do this: • Ask why: 'Encourage them to explain, justify or purpose. • Ask for clarification: 'Can you explain what you mean by…?’ • Ask for more: 'Can you elaborate or explain more about that?’ • Ask for an example or counter-example: 'Can you give me an example? 6. Encourage Good Listening If your child is to become a critical thinker, he/she needs to be a good listener. Encourage them to be a patient listener, but not just stopping them from talking. Attempt to understand, give the other person space to think and talk and not impose your thoughts or interpretations on them. 7. Be a good Role Model Probably, the most important thing you can do to help your child become a critical thinker is to model good critical thinking yourself. Observe, monitor and evaluate your own critical thinking, and, if possible, take steps to improve it.’ To sum it up, promote habits like reading, interacting socially, look-ing for solutions as well as problems and being curious. Play games to improve critical thinking in kids which will help boost the child’s confidence while helping them become critical thinkers. It is important you make your child understand the importance of diversity and out-of-the box ideas all helpful to become critical thinkers.