Help! My Children Can't Think Critically - Here's How Bloom's Taxonomy Can Fix That

Teaching critical thinking is hard. I know. It's the most important skill we're told to teach, but getting children to actually do it feels impossible. When we ask them to discuss themes of bullying or friendship in Wonder by R.J. Palacio, they're lost. They don't get why characters act the way they do or how peer pressure works.

They're missing so much information. To think critically about these topics, they first need to learn why people do what they do and how feelings and actions link together. What outside forces influence human behaviour, etc... Without knowing these things, they can't think deeply about the issues.

After years of trial and error, I realised teaching critical thinking is like building a house. You can't start with the roof or walls before you have a solid foundation. In the same way, the ability to analyse anything needs a foundation filled with simple facts and then more complex ideas, and so forth. Without all that, it all falls down.

Bloom's Taxonomy comes in as a lifesaver. It acts as a scaffold for building thinking skills. You start with the essentials - remembering stuff, understanding it, and using what you've learned. Only after you're good at those can you move to bigger thinking skills like analysing, judging, and making new things.

This isn't a straight path (like the diagram above seems to show); it's more like trekking through a dense forest. We go back to earlier steps to learn more as we navigate our way through. Each step helps us think better and better.

Bloom's taxonomy gives us a structured plan for teaching kids - or even ourselves - how to build critical thinking skills. We take it step by step, getting good at each level before we go to the next. That's what Duchess and Bruno's Comic Clues Story Cards aim to do. They help kids learn, understand, and use what they know, gradually improving their ability to think critically.

As they use the cards, they get better at understanding real-world problems, deciding what's true, and making up their own minds. That's what learning should be about: helping young people to think for themselves in a tricky world.

If you're ready to make critical thinking a reality in your classroom, take a look at our Comic Clues Story Cards. They're designed to guide your learners through Bloom's Taxonomy, helping them become the independent thinkers you know they can be.