This book is designed to teach critical thinking to middle and upper elementary students. Many workbooks claim to teach or develop critical thinking skills, but most of these products never define critical thinking or try to teach the meaning to students. This book defines and teaches critical thinking in a way all students can understand through simple explanations, diagrams, and short, engaging activities. In addition to being a course in critical thinking, the activities in this book can be used to supplement lessons in all subjects.

In addition to waking up sleepy brains for the day's lessons, these short, fun daily activity pages develop the most important reading comprehension skill found on all standardized reading tests. Synthesizing disparate information and using the result to produce a reasonable conclusion is an essential skill assessed on standardized reading tests. This comprehension skill usually determines a student's reading score–and every Daily Mind Builders™ activity develops this skill. Each daily activity page includes two puzzles. The first puzzle is a short, true mystery. Its solution requires careful reading, inferential reasoning, and deductive thinking. The second puzzle involves a process of elimination involving the meanings of words or relationships between words. Try the samples and you'll be hooked!

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. Available in Grades 1-6.

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. Available in Grades 1-6.

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. Available in Grades 1-6.

Understanding analogies and the ability to reason analogically (reasoning used to identify, evaluate, and solve an analogy) are important problem-solving skills. Problem-solving is an essential part of mathematical development. Analogies teach students to break problems down into their component parts, making it easier to recognize familiar formats that enable students to produce solutions. The Beginning level Math Analogies asks students to draw and verbalize their answers. The drawings develop fine motor skills, and the verbalization develops communication skills. The analogies in this book are designed around the grade-appropriate standards identified by the National Council of Teaching Mathematics.

Teachers loved Mary Ann Carr's One-Hour Mysteries and asked for more! In this follow-up to her wildly popular book, Carr offers five More One-Hour Mysteries. This book offers motivating mysteries that your students can solve using clues and logical reasoning. Your students become crime scene investigators, analyzing clues found at a crime scene and applying forensic techniques in their analysis. Each mystery includes a complete set of teacher instructions and reproducible handouts that may be photocopied for classroom use. This exciting book features the following mysteries:Miss Moneybags' Last Will and Testament, The Doggone Mystery, The Case of Forged Houdini, Who Took the Video Game, and Aunt Sally's Secret. What better way to motivate critical thinking than with a whodunit? Skills include deductive reasoning, inferring, taking notes, organizing data, and analyzing evidence. Get ready for real thinking combined with cloak-and-dagger fun!

Students carefully analyze each Mind Benders® story and its clues, identifying logical associations between people, places, and things. The key is to start with the most obvious associations, then deduce less obvious associations until everything finally fits together. Includes step-by-step instructions and detailed answers.

In Writing Detective®, students in Grades 3-6 act as investigative reporters writing articles for a local newspaper. To write the article, students must use higher-order thinking skills to synthesize clues they identify in the story to solve the mystery. Every activity requires students to put clues together and then evaluate the evidence to infer or deduce what happened in the story. The stories are high interest to make it easy to motivate students to do the analytical work needed to piece together the evidence and write the article. Before writing, students complete an outline detailing When, Who, What, Where, and How or Why. These fun, easy-to-use activities develop reading comprehension, higher-order thinking, and writing and organization skills. Answers for the Reading Comprehension questions and Outlines as well as Article sample answers are provided. There is a simple scoring rubric to make grading easier.

In addition to waking up sleepy brains for the day's lessons, these short, fun daily activity pages develop the most important reading comprehension skill found on all standardized reading tests. Synthesizing disparate information and using the result to produce a reasonable conclusion is an essential skill assessed on standardized reading tests. This comprehension skill usually determines a student's reading score–and every Daily Mind Builders™ activity develops this skill. Each daily activity page includes two puzzles. The first puzzle is a short, true mystery. Its solution requires careful reading, inferential reasoning, and deductive thinking. The second puzzle involves a process of elimination involving the meanings of words or relationships between words. Try the samples and you'll be hooked!

This collection of our most popular quick, fun thinking puzzles and games develops a variety of critical and creative thinking skills for top academic performance in all subjects. The book includes language development, math, writing, visual, spatial, and perceptual skills activities that build deductive, inductive, and logical reasoning. Easy-to-follow directions and answers are included.

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. Available in Grades 1-6.