Teaching Thinking Skills with Picture Books, K-3

Many of the most talented authors and artists of the past and present have shared their thoughts and their gifts with young children through picture books. Many picture books allow young children to explore important ideas and to stretch their minds far beyond rote memorization. Young children absorb knowledge at a very rapid pace. In an age of information overload, it is essential that children are taught those important thinking skills that are needed in dealing with the multitude of information they meet everyday. What better way to help children gain important thinking skills than exposure to quality literature. Emphasis in 21st century schools is on testing for rote knowledge. While knowledge is the starting point, it is essential that children are taught to evaluate data, to solve problems, to make decisions based on evidence, to be able to determine cause and effect, to predict and forecast based on evidence, to support or deny a hypothesis, to infer, to interpret, to question and analyze, and to use a host of other thinking skills. "Teaching Thinking Skills with Picture Books" is an easy-to-use guide to teaching those thinking skills which have been identified as appropriate for students in the primary grades. Each skill is introduced with a definition and oral practice exercise. Quality picture books are introduced with booktalks and followed by one or more thinking skills activities. Each activity is complete and needs no other materials to use. All skills introduced can be immediately applied to other areas of curriculum, as well as to real life situations. Here is a painless approach to helping students become better thinkers with skills that will also improve reading and writing ability. Following a introduction, the book is divided into 34 sections: (1) Analogy; (2) Analysis; (3) Associative Thinking; (4) Attribute Listing; (5) Brainstorm; (6) Classification; (7) Comparing; (8) Comprehension; (9) Decision Making; (10) Deductive Thinking; (11) Elaboration; (12) Evaluation; (13) Flexibility; (14) Fluency; (15) Forecasting; (16) Generalizing; (17) Hypothesizing; (18) Imagination; (19) Inferring; (20) Interpret; (21) Judging; (22) Knowledge; (23) Language Development; (24) Originality; (25) Patterning; (26) Phonemic Awareness; (27) Planning; (28) Predicting; (29) Problem Solving; (30) Questioning: Higher Order; (31) Research for Beginners; (32) Reversible Thinking; (33) Sequencing; and (34) Vocabulary. A title/author index is also included.