Daily Higher-Order Thinking, Grade 2

Book excerpt: Critical thinking skills are more important than ever in academic and real-world situations. Daily Higher-Order Thinking provides you with daily activities that build and grow students' problem-solving skills in engaging formats such as logic and visual puzzles, brainteasers, creative writing, picture comparison, word play, and "what if" questions. Daily 20-minute practice lessons help students apply critical thinking skills across subject areas. The lessons develop students' higher-order thinking skills and allow them to integrate their learning and make deeper connections between their learning and the real world. Use Daily Higher-Order Thinking for warm-up exercises, extension activities, early finisher tasks, and small-group center activities to develop your students' critical and creative thinking skills. How it works: - Monday-Friday: Full-page daily activities focus on a specific behavioral verb each day. The verb is defined at the top of the page so students become aware of when and how they are using the thinking skill. - Each full-page activity gives students an opportunity to practice a higher-order thinking skill in the context of a different curriculum area. - Questions and tasks are open-ended and can be used to promote peer-to-peer discussions as students share and discuss answers, while also fostering critical thinking skills. - An answer key provides sample responses for each day's activities. Evaluate students' responses based on your own expectations and on what content your students have encountered. The daily activities focus on skills such as analyzing, predicting, modeling, composing, organizing, evaluating options, designing, critiquing, and problem-solving. Grade 2 activities include: logic puzzles, language play, creative writing, drawing, and visual brainteasers. Daily lessons practice higher-order thinking skills such as: - Comparing - Grouping - Identifying - Inferring - Solving