The following is a review of various types of thinking skills activities applied to content areas. While different disciplines frequently require different types of thinking, some techniques are effective across disciplines. One method that promotes critical reading involves the use of news media in the class. Newspapers, magazines, television, and radio can motivate students to develop critical listening and reading skills. Differing accounts and editorials can be compared as a way of helping students read with a questioning attitude.
Students can construct their own arguments for discussion or publication in student newspapers.
In the process, they become more discriminating consumers of news media, advertising, and entertainment. Children's literature is another powerful tool for teaching thinking. Furthermore, literature that inspires and challenges helps students learn how to engage and interact with a book. In keeping with the current emphasis on writing across the curriculum, composition and rhetoric scholars stress the teaching of thinking through writing. The freewriting technique produces conceptual insights.