Vocabulary for Critical Thinking

Robert King

Photo courtesy of thepurplefreak
from Flickr Creative Commons.

Do you know what a mouse potato is? It’s a person who spends too much time staring at a computer screen. Mouse potatoes are the couch potatoes of the 21st century. In fact, Merriam Webster just added the term mouse potato to its august dictionary.

Perhaps you know a few mouse potatoes. Perhaps you are one. But just learning the term mouse potato suddenly makes you think about how much time you spend in front of the computer. That’s the power of vocabulary. It enables thinking. The size of your vocabulary impacts the size of your mental world.

Vocabulary as Inquiry

All right, so you’re saying, “Here we go—vocabulary. It’s so elementary.” Yes, it is—as in the word element: the building blocks of everything. In fact, the origin of the word elementum is the first three letters of the Canaanite alphabet. When we talk about elements, we are reciting our Canaanite ABCs.

Do you see how one word—elementary—has taken us from language arts to science to social studies? Do you see how knowing that elementum is the same as ABCs influences how we think about the Periodic Table of the Elements, about elementary school, about Holmes’s constant insistence that it is “elementary, my dear Watson”?

A word doesn’t have just one meaning. It is freighted with meaning. In its prefixes, roots, and suffixes, each word stores the DNA of human experience.

Vocabulary therefore shouldn’t be rote memorization. It should be inquiry.

[Read more.]

In the News

Recent articles on 21st century skills, inquiry, project-based learning, media literacy, and education reform

Common Core Resources for Teachers In this ASCD blog post, you’ll find links to resources that can help you align your teaching to the Common Core State Standards. The post includes links to articles, videos, toolkits, sample lessons, curricula, and many more resources.

Use PBL to Innovate the Music Classroom On the Edutopia blog, Andrew Miller shares insights about using project-based learning in music classrooms. He starts by aligning projects to music standards and then discusses how PBL creates an authentic need to know music. Miller also shares observations about assessment.

Kids and Video Games On Gamebeat, Scott Steinberg reports on a number of recent studies that indicate that video games actually make players smarter rather than less smart. He quotes Harvard Medical School researcher Cheryl Olson: “Parent-approved video games played in moderation can help young kids develop in educational, social, and physical ways.”

Can Stereotyping Girls Harm Boys Too? The MindShift Web site features an article by Annie Murphy Paul, reporting that gender stereotyping of academic performances hurts both genders. Recent studies have shown that when students are told that boys perform better than girls on a given task, both girls and boys underperform.

Google in Education for Teachers and Students Google recently posted a set of pages that provide links to educational resources for teachers and students. Teachers will find classroom resources and professional development, and students will find awards, competitions, programs, and tools.

5 Innovative Animation Tools for Teachers At Edudemic, Lisi Gopin describes a set of tools that teachers and students can use to make their own animations. Gopin focuses on Kerpoof Studio, Blabberize, ABCYA, Fluxtime, and Scratch.

Video Press Releases: K-12 Education Bill Focuses on 21st Century Skills On the Webpage of the Education & the Workforce Committee, three videos feature Republican legislators who praise an education reform bill. In the first video, Representative Thomas Petri of Wisconsin discusses how the bill simplifies access to federal funds for resources to teach 21st Century Skills. (The most relevant material begins at 1:26.)

Thoughtful Learning: Upcoming Events

ASCD Convention (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

Thoughtful Learning will be exhibiting at the ASCD annual conference from March 24–26 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA. We’ll provide more detailed information as the show approaches.

In Focus: Improving Social and Emotional Intelligence, One Day at a Time

We are developing a new line of products titled In Focus: Improving Social and Emotional Intelligence, One Day at a Time. The author of the line, Thomas McSheehy, has taught elementary school for 21 years and has been a social worker and family therapist for 16 years. Each book (K–2, 3–5, 6–8) provides concise daily activities to help your students develop their social and emotional intelligence by

• increasing attention and focus,
• reducing bullying and impulsive behavior,
• elevating self-esteem and confidence,
• strengthening social skills, and
• improving teamwork and collaboration.

For more information, download a free sampler of In Focus grades 6–8. Also, watch for more in future editions of the Thoughtful Inquirer!