Lesson One: Getting Started with Critical Thinking
Tim Dyke, English Department

1 ) First I attempt to define the term "critical thinking." In each of my classes I ended up drawing a picture on the board of a stick figure who represented a thinker. Then I'd draw a blob that represented the thing the thinker was thinking about. Then I drew lines from the thinker to the thing. Through discussion, questions, and pontification, I make clear that the thing doesn't in and of itself convey one meaning. If it did, all good thinkers would discover the same idea in any given artifact. My picture on the board represents that something happens as the stick figure thinks about the blob. Whatever it is that happens can be studied, and this scrutiny is what I call "critical thinking."

2) After I've defined the term, I throw students into an activity that exemplifies what I'm talking about. Basically, I give them a thing to think about. Then I ask them to record their thoughts. We put some of the thoughts on the board, and then we try to "track" how the thinker got from the thing to the thought. Here is an example of how such a class might go.

1. I play twenty seconds of a Hank Williams song and ask them to record their thoughts.
2. 1 ask one student what he wrote, and he writes that he thought about pig farmers and pickup trucks.
3. We all agree that the song wasn't about pig farmers or pickup trucks, so we try to figure out why the boy thought of those things.
4. As we discuss where the boy's thoughts "came from", we keep a running list of "Stuff that affects our thoughts."
5. We do a similar activity with a photo from an art book. What do you think? Where did the thought come from? What affects our thoughts?
6. We discuss this list of things that affect our thoughts. This becomes our "elements of reasoning." Soon we'll compare this to other models (including Paul's).
7. I give them a short poem or story to read for homework. I ask them to write about what they think about as they read. I ask them to revisit the "elements" list from class. Then I ask them to do on paper what we did in class: track your thinking about the text; show where your thoughts "came from" and note all that affected your thinking.
8. Next class we begin by updating our elements list. We lead ourselves in a thoughtful discussion that explicates the text and unspools our thought processes.