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[struelle]

Just thought I'd pass on some stuff I'm learning in my PGCE courses now, which might be useful in EFL classes with students.

A Canadian educator by the name of Roland Case has designed a series of books called "Critical Challenges". I attended one of his workshops here, and it was phenomenal. He flies back and forth from Canada and India to teach critical thinking, mainly to elementary and social studies classes.

According to Cases's research, a critical challenge consists of a task that employs 4 key 'tools', if you will:

1) Background Knowledge - What do I need to know to solve this problem?
*2) Criteria for Judgment - What criteria do I use to make a judgment?
3) Habits of Mind - critical mindedness, fair mindedness, open-mindedness
4) Thinking Strategies - making decisions, organizing info, role taking

A criticial challenge is designed so that students work on a problem that requires them to make a judgment. The key here is which criteria they use to make that judgment.

For example, in a Science class: "Given a sheet of tinfoil and X number of pennies, design a boat that can maximize the number of pennies in it without sinking."

Or, for an intermediate EFL class which I've done before: "You have 3 cities competiting for the 2012 Olympic bid. Given what you've read about each city, which do think is most suitable to host the Olympics?"

Types of critical challenges would include:

- Design to specs
- Judge the better or the best
- Decode the puzzle
- Redesign the piece.

The criteria for an effective CC would be:

- Does the question of task require judgment? It must include more than a retrieval of info or uninformed guessing.
- Will the challenge be meaningful to the student?
- Does the challenge address key aspects of the subject matter?

The last two are harder to work with, especially low-level students. One problem would be giving CCs that are too difficult and/or out of context, such that students get bored with them.

If the CC is engaging and highly relevant to the students' lives, you could plan entire lessons with them. I did this once with adults where they had to choose a mock school to send their kids to.

Hope this helps,
Steve