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"The longer I teach (I'm now in my 32nd year) the more I'm convinced that the best thing we can do for our students is help them learn to think for themselves. That involves explaining what critical thinking actually means - a step I fear we often skip - as well as equipping them with the requisite skills. That's why I recommend talking to students on the first day of class about critical thinking. What is it? Why is it important? How can they learn to do it? What follows is an example of my opening-day remarks. For graduate students and Ph.D.s new to teaching, if this talk resonates with you, feel free to adapt it for your own classrooms."

It's often hard to justify watching a two-hour film when there's so much else that has to be done. But, what about an eight-minute film? That's the average length of our Film Club features, and these short documentary films do much more than just entertain. They challenge assumptions and offer new perspectives. They tell stories that often remain hidden, and introduce us to people and places foreign to us. As with other short texts like stories, poems and articles, mini-documentary films can stimulate discussion, debate, thinking and writing. And, they can serve as a refreshing break from print media to help students explore curriculum themes and practice important literacy skills. Below, we present eight films we've featured in our Film Club series that have already captured students' and teachers' attention. In addition, we offer practical teaching ideas, along with responses from students and teachers, for how you can use these documentaries, or films like them, to teach close reading and critical thinking skills."

"1. Survey students about our school's writing atmosphere What role do you expect writing to play in your life during the next 5-10 years? What do you think colleges/universities expect in terms of student writing? What writing do you think is valued at your high school? What does your teacher value in terms of writing? How do you know what writing is valued at your school and in this class? In the last 2-3 years, what has positively influenced your writing? What feedback is most helpful to you as a writer? How does grading influence your writing? My colleague and I turned these questions into a Google form survey, and the results will give us lots to think about in the months ahead. This is a great opportunity to talk with students about what they value about writing and help them find ways to make their writing reflect what they value and what readers might need.  2. Separate my reading roles At the symposium, participants discussed how rarely we simply read student work as readers. 3. Create opportunities to switch "modes""

"Last September we introduced a new lesson-plan format called Text to Text, in which we pair two texts that we think "speak" to each other in interesting ways, then pose questions and suggest a few activities for students to bring the writings together. One of the excerpts we use is always from The New York Times - sometimes pulled from that week's headlines, and other times from the archives. The other excerpt generally comes from an often-taught literary, historical, cultural, scientific or mathematical text. Our goal: to help students see a classic work through a new lens, or to think about how and why a text still matters."

"The ability to think critically will benefit students throughout their lives. Here are a few tips on how to get started teaching it."

"Think of a topic from your own teaching that you wish your students cared more about. It could be social justice, evolution, literature, or anything that you really care about but some students do not. Now, how can you use these 5 pedagogical moves to make your topic relevant for students? To help you think through, I have 5 tips and questions-based in literacies research-that you can ask yourself to keep your teaching relevant to your students."

Melissa MongI: "Improv enthusiasts rave about its educational value. Not only does it hone communication and public speaking skills, it also stimulates fast thinking and engagement with ideas. On a deeper level, improv chips away at mental barriers that block creative thinking - that internal editor who crosses out every word before it appears on a page - and rewards spontaneous, intuitive responses, Criess says. Because improv depends on the group providing categorical support for every answer, participants also grow in confidence and feel more connected to others."

"The collection of prompts below asks young writers to think through real or imagined events, their emotions, and a few wacky scenarios. Try out the ones you think will resonate most with your students. "

"At the beginning of the writing process, I have had students write silently. For it to be successful, in my experience, students need plenty of topics handy (self-generated, or a list of topics, questions, and prompts provided). Silent writing is a wonderful, focused activity for the brainstorming and drafting stage of the writing process. I also think it's important that the teacher write during this time, as well (model, model, model). However, when it comes to revising, and later, editing, I think peer interaction is necessary. Students need to, for example, "rehearse" words, phrases, introductions, and thesis statements with each other during the revision stage."

"Inquiry or interrogation? What if you asked your students which of these best describes their experience with classroom questioning? How do you think they would respond? My colleague Beth Sattes and I have posed this question to a wide range of students. The majority choose "questioning as interrogation" as the best fit for their experience. What makes them feel this way? Many believe that teachers ask questions to surface "right" answers, which students fear they don't know. Others think teachers ask questions mostly to find out who is paying attention - or not! Almost all students view follow-up questions as attempts to keep them on the "hot seat" and embarrass them for not knowing. And most perceive classroom questioning to be a competition that pits students against one another - Whose hand goes up first? Who answers most frequently? Very few students understand questioning as a process for collaborative exploration of ideas and a means by which teachers and students alike are able to find out where they are in their learning and decide on next steps. This is one of the primary themes running through our work."

Atticus Finch is one of the greatest fictional dads of all time, and in honor of the film's half-century mark, both his daughters spoke to CNN. That is, Peck's real life daughter, Cecilia Peck, and the actress who played Scout, Mary Badham. By all accounts, Peck, who won the Academy Award for his portrayal of Atticus, embodied his character's values on and off screen. "He was an Atticus," Cecilia Peck said. "He really was that kind of father to me and my brothers. I believe that he was always very much like Atticus but I think that doing the film when we were very young made him become even more that way and I think as much as he put of himself into the role, Atticus became him, too."

" five articles that use photography and narrative to reveal the texture of teenage life; next, 11 articles about young people making a splash in the world; and, finally, three news articles about teenage life that we think might provoke interesting classroom discussions. Let us know what you think and how we could make this feature more useful for your classroom. The next installment will be published on July 11."

"The Times's Room for Debate hosts six knowledgeable outside contributors who debate whether the college rankings are useful for students or too simplistic. Your Task: Do you think the college ranking system is a useful guide for students looking to find the right college, or do you think the rankings are too simplistic or misleading? Use the six Room for Debate opinion pieces to learn more about the issue and gather evidence on both sides, perhaps keeping track of what you find with this pro-con T-chart organizer (PDF). Then, write your own opinion, making sure you to use evidence from the various opinion pieces to back up your position. (You may even want to rebut a counterclaim within your response to strengthen your argument.)"

"Below, you'll find a categorized collection of Times articles and Opinion pieces from the 2014-15 academic year about all aspects of higher education - from getting in, to thinking about why you are there, to considering how to fix what's broken. We hope you'll find plenty to discuss. As the school year began last September, Frank Bruni, a Times Op-Ed columnist, issued a challenge to college freshmen to "construct their world from scratch" and seek out people who think differently: Now more than ever, college needs to be an expansive adventure, yanking students toward unfamiliar horizons and untested identities rather than indulging and flattering who and where they already are. And students need to insist on that, taking control of all facets of their college experience and making it as eclectic as possible. We hope some of the pieces below can help."

"Closely reading any text, whether written or visual, requires that students proceed more slowly and methodically, noticing details, making connections and asking questions. This takes practice. But it certainly helps when students want to read the text. We've selected 10 photos from The Times that we've used previously in our weekly "What's Going On in This Picture?" and that have already successfully caught students' and teachers' attention. These are some of our most popular images - ones that may make viewers say "huh?" on first glance, but that spark enough curiosity to make them want to dig deeper. Below, we offer ideas from students and teachers who have engaged with these images for ways to use them, or images like them, to teach close reading and visual thinking skills."

"When mistakes become learning opportunities, everything changes. Students take more risks, think in new ways, cheat less, and solve mysteries that had previously eluded them. Here are some things that we can do in the classroom to change this defeating way of thinking, including both formal and informal evaluation processes:"

"In Karen's very clear standards for students about points, grades, and keeping score, one sees a belief that school is about work and that students must be coerced or bribed into learning through the use of grades. In this chapter, I'll explore five belief sets that act as action theories and lay a foundation for our expectations in learning groups. They can either facilitate a culture of thinking, though they can never fully ensure it, or act as an inhibiting challenge to that development. The five belief sets are as follows: * Focusing students on the learning vs. the work * Teaching for understanding vs. knowledge * Encouraging deep vs. surface learning strategies * Promoting independence vs. dependence * Developing a growth vs. a fixed mindset"

""If visual literacy is the ability to read, write, and comprehend visual language, then looking at an image is similar to skimming a text while seeing an image is comparable to reading it." So how does someone move from looking at an image to fully seeing it? "As you begin to slow down and look closer, you will begin to make note of the different elements in the image. This is called observing- the process of building a catalog of visual elements- and is the bridge between looking and seeing." One reason why twenty-first century students need to master this type of thinking is so that they can understand the way they are affected by media. Francoise Mouly, Art Editor of the New Yorker's "TOON" book comics, thinks there's probably a lot of support for visual literacy, but that educators don't know where to start when it comes to teaching it. It's clear that teaching visual literacy is more than just using visual aids or Power Point slides. So if educators are going to try teaching the real thing, where should they begin? Here are five ideas to get you started."

"Students struggle at writing because in an era of standardization and accountability, very little of the "writing" we ask them to do requires them to engage deeply with the true basics of writing: ideas. Maguire analogizes writing with the "muscle memory" that Mr. Miyagi teaches Daniel in "The Karate Kid," but writing is thinking, and thinking is not a reflex, but is instead a complex and deliberative process. Maguire's focus on sentence "readability" as the basics of writing is actually rooted in the same problems with writing instruction that is oriented toward passing standardized assessments judged on surface level traits. Students are coached on rubrics and rules that will help them pass muster on these tests - for good reason when teachers and schools are going to be judged on the results - but genuine, meaningful writing does not adhere to rubrics and rules."

Great article about the role language and word use have on thinking. Changing words and their use can change the world!