Primarily Thinking, Grades 2-3

Educators realize that students need more than instruction in reading, spelling, and arithmetic. They recognize the need for students at all grade levels to be actively engaged in learning how to think. Mere acquisition of knowledge is not enough if our schools are to successfully prepare students for the future.

Primarily Thinking is a foundation for building critical thinking skills that will serve students in all areas of the curriculum and in real-life situations. It offers practice in six essential thinking skills that will get students' brain cells jumping:

• comparing and contrasting,
• classification,
• fact and opinion,
• cause and effect,
• patterns, and
• sequencing.

Each skill is presented in a series of interesting reproducible worksheets. At the end of each section, there are additional activities for the teacher to use to provide further practice in applying thinking skills in all areas of the curriculum.

Once students have mastered a basic understanding of these skills, they will be able to develop the skills on a more advanced level. As students get older, they should be able to apply these same skills with more complex and abstract situations, information, problems, and concepts. Given these skills, students will be more adequately prepared to deal with life situations in a logical, rational manner than if they have only been taught to digest information. These thinking skills are crucial to thoughtful living.

These activities are closely linked to the Creative Problem Solving process. For more activities on CPS, refer to Primarily Problem Solving and Creative Problem Solving: An Introduction.

Grades 2–3