Very young students can develop logical skills by working with attribute blocks. These are blocks with specific shapes that must be put into holes shaped similar to the blocks. For example, the square shape must go in the square hole. Students can also be asked to arrange different-colored shapes into categories, with shapes with the same colors going into the same category.
Older students can learn more formalized logic. They can learn about logical fallacies and why certain arguments are not valid. Teachers can use concept maps to show the relationship between premises and conclusions — for example: “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.” Teachers can also have students watch debates, commercials or commentary that employs illogical arguments and can then pick apart these arguments with the students.
Another left-brained activity is sequential reasoning, which is the understanding that certain actions must be performed in a specific order. One form of sequential reasoning is cause and effect, when one action causes another. Students are likely to need the ability to differentiate cause from effect when working in certain professions such as law enforcement and medicine. Teachers can use graphical organizers to help students understand how certain causes can lead to predictable effects. The teacher can write a cause of an event on a chalkboard, write an effect on another part of the chalkboard and draw an arrow pointing from the cause to the effect. The teacher can then ask the students to explain why the cause leads to the effect.
Analysis is the process of breaking down complex ideas into more simplistic parts that others can understand. Literature is often used to teach analysis because students are usually familiar with stories and can explain them more easily than they can other topics, such as DNA replication. The teacher can have students read a story and then ask them to explain why characters performed certain actions or why they thought the story had a certain setting. Teachers can have students answer these questions through short essays.