FROM THE MIDDLE SCHOOL

What are critical thinking skills?

A key focus throughout the Middle School is to promote opportunities, challenges and connections to developing critical thinking skills.  These are interdisciplinary; they apply to real world issues and create community discussion and collaborations.  There are seven critical thinking skills. What are they? Where do you apply them?  How do you know if you are developing them?
These questions are a central focus in how we craft design thinking challenges, create key questions for investigation and importantly enable students to share their thinking in many and varied contexts.

The seven key critical thinking skills are: analysis, interpretation, inference, explanation, self-regulation, open-mindedness, and problem-solving.

A rich curriculum requires a balance of these types of thinking skills within investigations and applying them in both content focused and concept focused pedagogies. Some examples of critical thinking skills in action already in the Middle School are:

• Creative writing experiences in Year 8;
• Digital technology challenges in Year 6;
• Water rocket launching experiments in Year 7; and
• Middle School Drama auditions for Fantastic Mr Fox.

Throughout our academic learning, social and emotional development, these thinking skills are also displayed in many different ways. It is important for our young leaders to firstly have experience with them but more importantly, keep learning to improve these skills, as they are truly a life-long skill set!

Reminder to return Year 7 Immunisation Forms

A reminder for parents of Year 7 students to return Immunisation Forms to Middle School Reception before Monday 28 February 2022. Forms must be completed and returned regardless of whether or not your child will be having the immunisation at school.

Ben Green
Head of Middle School