Support your child to develop their logic and problem-solving skills with these top tips.
What’s critical thinking?
Critical thinking is ‘thinking about thinking’. An important skill for life, it lets us evaluate evidence and solve problems based on logic.
People with strong critical thinking skills can go beyond simply following instructions. They can look for connections across different pieces of information to form their own conclusions.
Your child will get used to critical thinking with practice. Here are our top tips to support them in developing these important skills!
Ask questions
When you’re working together or looking through corrections, ask questions to
encourage deeper thinking. Some good ones to start with:
- Can you elaborate further?
- Can you give me an example?
- Is there another way to look at this question?
- Can you provide more details?
Take a step back
As parents, it can be tempting to jump in and help when our child is struggling with
a problem. Try to avoid this! Give them the chance to try different approaches on their own first.
If they’re still unsure, try using prompts like:
- What do you think the first step is?
- What do you think this question is asking?
Dive into discussion
Make sure your child has chances to discuss topics with others.
- Encourage them to chat with siblings and friends
- Take part in online lessons on Atom Home
Experiencing different points of view will help them to practise forming their own opinions based on new information.
Examples from real life will improve their ability to evaluate new evidence. So, make a
habit of using anecdotes, analogies and facts in conversation with your child.
Critical thinking topics on Atom Home
Here are our top picks of English and maths topics that have questions to challenge your child's critical thinking. Try setting extra practices in these topics.
English
Comprehension
- Interpreting text:
- Deduction
- Inference
Maths
Number
- Operation:
- Worded Problems
Measurement
- Weights and measures:
- Time
- Speed
- Money
Data
- Graphs:
- Tables
- Line graphs
- Bar charts