RIS promotes the learners to acquire STAR Skills. Learners develop their synthesizing, thinking, analyzing and reasoning abilities through the innovative pedagogy and curriculum transaction in the classroom. In today’s global and rapidly changing world, learners need to be able to do much more than just repeat facts or continue with rote learning; they need to be critical thinkers who can make sense of information, analyze, compare, contrast, make inferences, and generate higher-order thinking skills. Learners begin to express verbally from the age of 2 years and we are able to recognize their first development in conversational skills and the other skills take time to develop and change over time. They observe and imitate from the environment but over the years they develop STAR abilities and are able to use critical thinking skills to think back on how to solve problems in order to find solutions.
There is no formula to make your child think critically. As a parent or facilitator, your role may sometimes be to ask open-ended questions to guide the thinking process. Ask them to focus on understanding the concepts well and think on the application of the concept learnt.
In other cases, it may be more appropriate to allow your child to experiment and refine their theories on what causes things to happen. Guiding your child’s critical thinking process can have a positive impact on her problem-solving skills.
The ideal way would be to provide opportunities for play and learn, do not immediately offer help or solution, pause and wait for the learner to express, intend on motivating the learner to think by asking open-ended questions, help them develop hypotheses and encourage critical thinking in new and different ways. These activities foster brain development and help the learner think critically for solutions to problems in hand.
Mrs Richa Kumar is the Principal of Rahul International School, Boisar, Maharashtra. As a learner and an educator from past 20 plus years in training, teaching, curriculum designing, content development, administration, counselling, workshops for parents, students and teachers. She has set up and designed academic sessions for student development program and promoting inclusive education in schools. She has designed curriculum for multiple publication hoses and even has a Copyright for her design on ‘Perpetual Motor Skill Development Program for Preschool students.’ Mrs Kumar has many accolades with her name ranging from Education World to Edustar (THT Platform)
