Your friend is in deep despair over this loss and is fearful of facing the future alone. Five Types of Written Assignments for Critical Thinking 1. Although summarizing might appear to be a simple exercise, it requires identifying central concepts and issues, prioritizing, and seeing connections between concepts. Summarizing requires sorting through words and ideas, trying to separate the essential from the nonessential. . . Instructors therefore should give priority to initial assignments that highlight essential concepts, issues, and principles and require students to translate these into their own words and experience. . . .
Summaries function much like study questions.
Problem solving exercises using popular media Asking to students to apply the knowledge in the course to respond to an editorial, political columnist, or recent news story is a good way to turn abstract concepts into concrete applications. Simulations and cases Simulations and hypothetical or real cases provide a realistic context, a purpose, and an audience with which to apply the content of the course, to pull together the various themes and threads, to apply abstract principles to a concrete situation. A Guide to Faculty in All Disciplines. Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1986.