One of the key ideas behind critical thinking is called metacognition. Metacognition refers to the ability to think about your thinking. It is realizing when you are confused, when you connect with an idea or when you have learned something new. Teach young children to become metacognitive by modeling how to reflect before, during and after the problem solving process and gradually asking them to do it on their own.
One of the most natural ways to teach young children to think critically is through literature. Read and discuss rich literature with students and create projects that will allow them to extend their thinking. Begin by asking basic recall questions. Then ask students to summarize or explain the meaning of the story. Develop an activity or a project in which students apply the ideas from the story by drawing pictures or writing paragraphs. Encourage students to analyze the information by comparing it to other stories or to their own lives.
Creative thinking is not something that you "do" once a day, week or month. Foster a classroom environment where analyzing and synthesizing information is the norm. Ask students to think and to think about their thinking until it becomes the natural thing to do. Make thinking a tangible thing with comments like "Your brain had a lot of interesting questions about that" or "How did your brain come up with that idea?" Validate students' questions. Teach students to stop while they are reading and recognize the connections they are making to the story. Recognize and celebrate good thinking, and the students will do the same.
According to Bloom's Taxonomy, higher order thinking skills can be broken down into six different categories. They include knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Keep this hierarchy in mind when forming questions and developing projects. If you always stick to the basic knowledge questions, students will only learn to recall information from the text. To develop higher level thinking, form questions in which students use comprehension, synthesis and evaluation.