Organizing Thinking Book 1

Content Instruction • Critical Thinking • Graphic Organizers - Writing, Language Arts, Social Studies, Math, and Science

Grades: 2nd - 4th
Subject: Critical Thinking
ISBN: 0-89455-354-2
Activities: 82
Pages: 324

Improves content learning as it develops critical thinking and effective learning strategies!

Description & Features

Organizing Thinking lessons integrate content instruction, critical thinking, and graphic organizers to help students:
• Simplify, understand, and remember information
• Develop deeper learning connections
• Organize and manage their own thinking and learning

Each lesson clearly identifies the content objective and thinking process being taught. Students are provided with content material and a blank organizer for depicting relevant information. Lesson plans include techniques for using graphic organizers; discussion activities that explain, model, or extend lessons; and a summary of inferences, interpretations, or conclusions which result from discussion.

Teaching Support
Includes complete lesson guidelines, reproducible graphic organizers, and answers.

Organizers on CD - Sold Separately
23 blank blackline organizers on CD. Just open and print or modify and print for your own use. (CD contains blank organizers only, not the content lessons from the book described above.)

Contents/Skills

• Language Arts — Nouns & Verbs / Parts of Speech / Describing A Character, Plot, or Story / Inferences, Reasons & Conclusions / Main Idea, Supporting Details
• Writing — Definitions / Autobiography / Report / Descriptive / Expository / Creative Social Studies — Neighborhoods & Cities / Land Forms & Water Bodies / Explorers & Discoverers / Oil Products / City, State, National Governments
• Mathematics — Common Factors / Classifying Shapes / Inflation & Kids' Buying Power / Probability & Statistics / Flowcharting a Word Problem
• Science — Comparing Living & Non-Living Things / Contrasting Plants & Animals / How Seeds Travel / Solids, Liquids, Gases / Energy

Table of Contents
Introduction--Components of Organizing Thinking

Chapter 1--Blackline Master Graphs

• Lesson Plan Form
• Compare and/or Contrast Diagrams
• Interval Graphs
• Transitive Order Graphs
• Flowchart Diagrams
• Central Idea Graphs
• Branching Diagrams
• Class Relationships Diagrams
• Matrix Diagrams

Chapter 2--Language Arts Lessons

• Vocabulary Development
• Describing Size
• Grammar and Language Mechanics
• Nouns and Verbs
• Statements and Questions
• Parts of Speech
• Research and Library Systems
• Newspapers and Magazines
• History or Fiction?
• Types of Book
• Literature
• Aesop's Fables
• Charlotte's Web: Describing a Character
• Charlotte's Web: Drawing Inferences
• Charlotte's Web: Reasons and Conclusions
• Charlotte's Web: Describing the Plot
• Describing a Story
• "The Steam Shovel
• Speech
• Describing a Good Speech
• I'm Listening
• Critical Reading and Reasoning
• Describing Class Relationships
• Main Idea and Supporting Details

Chapter 3--Writing

• Writing Definitions
• Writing Your Autobiography
• Writing a Report
• Descriptive Writing: A Common Object
• Expository Writing: A Historical Event
• Creative Writing: Dinosaur

Chapter 4--Social Studies

• Social Institutions
• Draw Your Family Tree
• Geography
• Neighborhoods and Cities
• New England and the Southwest
• Land Forms and Bodies of Water
• United States History
• Explorers and Discoverers
• Economics
• Goods and Services
• Producers and Consumers
• Taxes and the Community
• Checks and Money
• Cashing a Check
• Products from Oil
• Needs and Resources: The Buffalo as a Source of Supply
• Political Science
• What Government Does
• City, State, and National Governments

Chapter 5--Mathematics

• Number Operations
• Using a Number Line to "Feels" Addition and Subtraction
• Checking Subtraction
• Finding a Mathematical Rule
• Factor Tree
• Common Factors
• Reviewing the Greatest Common Factor and the Least Common Multiple
• Value of Fractions
• Geometry
• Classifying Shapes
• Describing Quadrilaterals
• Classifying Shapes by Sides and Angles
• Graphing and Measurement
• Comparing Units of Measure
• Effect of Inflation on Kid's Buying Power
• Probability and Statistics
• Heads or Tails?
• Do You Have the Right Change?
• Word Problems
• Writing a Flowchart for a Word Problem

Chapter 6--Science

• Science Observation
• Classifying Thing
• Life Science
• Comparing Living and Non-Living Things
• Contrasting Plants and Animals
• How Animals Move
• Life Cycle of a Plant
• How Seeds Travel
• What Part of a Plant Do We Eat?
• Fruit or Vegetable?
• The Four Food Groups
• Food Chain
• Meat-Eating and Plant-Eating Dinosaur
• Physical Science
• Solids, Liquids, and Gases
• Heating and Cooling Water
• Water Cycle
• Energy Changes
• Simple Machines
• Which Sound is Louder
• Weather Observations
• Stars and Planets

Chapter 7--Enrichment

• Music
• The Trumpet and the Tuba
• Comparing Number and Music Patterns
• Recognizing the Beat
• Describing a Musical Work
• Art
• Elements of Design
• Describing a Picture

Chapter 8--Personal Problem Solving

• Short- and Long-term Goals
• The Effects of Watching Too Much Television
• Reducing Lunchroom Waste
• Do I Really Know It?