Examining Thinking Skills
Instructions: Review the learning skills below. Check five skills that you consider to be
the most important skills to be successful in the 21st century.
Check Skills
Knowledge
Recalls information
Lists elements of problem
Comprehension
Restates/explains problem in one’s own words
Simplifies the problem
Application
Uses knowledge in new and novel situations
Demonstrates concepts
Solves problems
Breaks down information into workable, related parts
Discusses options/considers multiple hypotheses
Makes generalizations to other situations
Starts with a vision and works backwards
Creates, imagines and innovates
Assesses the validity of methods and answers
Supports a conjecture with a logical argument
Judges value based on criteria
Having positive attitudes and perceptions about learning
Maintaining curiosity, enthusiasm, and passion about learning
Analysis
Synthesis
Evaluation
Attitude
Habits of Mind
Having productive habits that will enable to learn on own
Persisting
Ability to sustain a problem solving process over time
Managing
Impulsivity
Listening to
Others
Communicating
with Clarity and
Precision
Thinking
Flexibly
Ability to think before acting
Intentionally forming a plan before beginning a task
Thinking About
Thinking
(Metacognition)
Striving for
Accuracy and
Precision
Questioning
and Posing
Problems
Finding Humor
Ability to listen to another person
Ability to empathize with and to understand another point of view
Communicating accurately in both written and oral form
Capacity to change one’s mind as additional data is received
Ability to approach a problem from a new angle using a novel
approach
Ability to reflect back on and evaluate a plan upon completion
Aware of one’s actions and the effect of those actions on others and
on the environment
Ability to explain one’s strategies of decision making
Valuing of accuracy, precision and craftsmanship
Knowing how to ask questions to fill in the gaps between what is
known - unknown
Ability to recognize discrepancies and phenomena in one’s
environment
Ability to probe into their causes
Using humor and laughter to liberate creativity and provoke higherlevel thinking
Finding incongruity and perceiving absurdities, ironies and satire
Handout 1.2