An Example of Critical Thinking in My Classroom

Building critical thinking skills in a classroom can be a simple as working through problems out loud, without offering answers.  Often times when discussing electrical theory and solving mathematical problems related to those theories,  as a class we would all work through the problem while relating back to the theory.  I would act only as a facilitator and would occasionally move the conversation subtly in the right direction but I would still let the class make mistakes and work our way backward.  We all try to learn from mistakes and I found approaching problems like this encourages understanding in the subject matter, and teaches them to not just plunk numbers into a formula for a final correct result, but to actually understand ‘why’ we came to the solution we did.