Teacher Guide This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble. Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at BingInTheClassroom@Microsoft.com. You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on our Partners In Learning site. Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location. And if you are using Windows 8, you can also use the Bing apps to learn more about this location and topic; the Travel and News apps in particular make great teaching tools. This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard:
Main Critical Thinking Question © Stephen Frink/Aurora Photos Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.
Main Critical Thinking Question Happy National Lighthouse Day! Wait, you mean you didn’t know that was a thing? The origins of the holiday stretch back to 1789 when the United States Congress passed an act to fund and support lighthouses to continue their important work of keeping vital shipping lanes safe. More than two hundred years later, the still-active law prompted the passage of National Lighthouse Day, observed annually on August 7. One of the purposes of Lighthouse Day was to encourage states to open lighthouses to the public, and to provide a real-world demonstration of the importance of the lighthouse in our nation’s history. As it happens, Alligator Reef Light in the Florida Keys isn’t easily accessible. Though the lighthouse itself isn’t open for tours, the water around it is, as many boaters, snorkelers, and open-water swimmers will attest. Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.
Main Critical Thinking Question 1 2 3 4 5 There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)
Main Critical Thinking Question 5 Minutes You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.
Main Critical Thinking Question 1 2 3 4 5 You can ask the students verbally or let one of them come up and insert the answer or show how they got it. This way, you also have a record that you can keep as a class and share with parents, others.
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Main Critical Thinking Question This slide is a chance to summarize the information from the previous slides to build your final answer to the question.