1. 1st Grade Evaluative Thinking Lesson Brainstorming Thinkers Key - Intro for Teachers
CCSD Advanced Learning – Talent Development

2. Children do not develop their thinking skills by memorizing the products of adults’ thinking.
They develop skills by manipulating ideas, critically examining them, and combining them in new ways.
Taba, 1971, pp. 240–241

3. Critical Thinking Rather than merely accepting ideas or information,
critical thinking involves analysis and evaluation:
Understanding of relationships, similarities, and differences
Looking for patterns; classifying and categorizing
Understanding cause/effect; seeing trends and big ideas
Predicting outcomes
Considering multiple perspectives
Making judgments
Questioning and reasoning

4. Great… Now how do we do it?
By getting creative!

5. Creative thinking requires critical thinking skills and goes beyond to generate something new and useful:
Generating innovative ideas, products, and solutions
Expressing ideas in innovative ways
Communicating ideas, solutions, or products to an appropriate audience

6. 1st Grade Brainstorming Lessons
Using Thinkers Keys
CCSD Advanced Learning – Talent Development

7. What will students do?
Students will use Task Cards to brainstorm a list of solutions to a problem which needs to be solved. All answers are valid and 'piggybacking' on others ideas is encouraged.
Each task is open-ended and allows for a range of solutions or ideas.
The teacher and the student decide on the number of ideas to be generated and the expected achievement level.
Students can write, draw, make, perform, use graphic organizers or design their solutions to the given problems.

8. Implementing the Lesson
Prepare:
Print and laminate each 2-sided task card.
You may want to make copies of the organizers o the back of each card to provide scaffolding for students.
Present: Brainstorming Mini Lesson
Practice:
Allow students to work in pairs or individually on each consecutive task.
There are no right or wrong answers. These tasks encourage and promote individual, creative and lateral thinking. 

9. Assessment
Students will be observed as they brainstorm solutions to a problem presented on each Task Card.
Students will use an organizer on the back of the task card to independently complete the brainstorming exercise.
The teacher will evaluate students as they display:
Originality of thought
Flexible thinking (many different uses) and
Fluency (generating lots of questions/ideas) as they complete their tasks.