Additional Writing Activities

1. With classmates, identify a common problem for students at your college—juggling a busy schedule, parking on campus, making a class change, joining a social group, or some other issue. Working together, use critical thinking to explore the problem and identify possible solutions. Make notes as you explore the problem and solutions, and put your findings into writing.

2. Working with a classmate or small group, select a sample assignment (not already explained) from the table on page 38 or from one of your classes. Explain, in writing, how you would approach the assignment to demonstrate your critical thinking. Also, share your strategies for tackling college assignments.

3. Think back over the past month at college, at work (if you hold a job), and in your day-to-day life. Then respond to these two self-reflection prompts: (a) Which experiences have been the most important, because they taught you something valuable, gave you confidence in your abilities, or supported your personal growth in some other way? (b) Which experiences have been the most challenging, and why?

4. Source Activity. Using your college’s library, or using research tools available on the library’s Web site, identify two or three sources that cover (a) a topic you are investigating for a college course or (b) a topic you find personally interesting. Keeping in mind at least three key questions that you have about your topic, read over the sources and try to answer these questions, making notes. (In case you want to revisit these sources later, make sure to record their titles and authors, the publications they came from, and any page numbers.) Afterward, respond to these self-reflection questions: Was it easy to find relevant and helpful sources, or was it more difficult than you expected? Why? To what degree did the sources answer your questions? Do you still feel the need to track down additional information? If so, will you adjust your search strategy in any way? How?

5. Visual Activity. Working with a classmate or small group, examine one or more of the photographs below. Then, using the critical thinking skills discussed in A Process of Critical Thinking, share your impressions of the photographs. For example, you might analyze the images by considering their various parts or components and discussing how they work together or set one another apart. Or you might evaluate the images by considering their lighting, their composition, the distance or perspective from which the subjects were photographed, the mood created, and so on.