Building Critical Thinking Skills for Literacy Success
When sharing books with your child it’s important to help them understand the story. If young children understand the stories they hear, it’ll be easier for them to read and write their own stories later on. Your child needs to use critical thinking skills to understand stories. These skills include;
Explaining why – encourage your child to come up with explanations (e.g. ask questions that could have different explanations, such as “why does the bear have fur?” or “why did Susie go to the shops?”)
Having opinions – encourage your child to offer opinions about what they like about different objects, events and experiences (e.g. “I like going to the park because I get to play on the playground”)
Understanding other people’s perspectives – encourage your child to consider situations from different points of view (e.g. ask; “how do you think he feels?”, “what do you think she’s thinking right now?” or “why do you think he wants to do that?”)
Predicting – encourage your child to think about what might happen next (e.g. ask “what do you think will happen next?” ask your child to explain why they think that.)
Thinking about solutions – encourage your child to solve problems. Help to describe the problem and think of different solutions and decide on the best option. (E.g. “Uh-oh, your lunch bag is missing. What else can we use to carry your lunch?”)
(Adapted from: More than ABCs: Building the critical thinking skills your child needs for literacy success. Hanen.org 2016)
Speech Pathology Team