Resources

TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING THROUGH CURRENT ISSUES

Critical thinking is a skill that students can learn. And what better way to teach this skill than through current issues? ReferencePoint’ Teaching Critical Thinking Through Current Issues guide suggests various activities to help teachers challenge their students in both learning and practicing this important skill. Using current issues to help students sharpen their critical thinking skills is extremely valuable. Current issue topics provide excellent examples for structured classroom debate, but they also impact the lives of students beyond school walls. The goal of these exercises is to prepare students to use sound critical thinking and form reasoned opinions as they encounter similar issues in the world outside the classroom.

GUIDE TO RESEARCH AND WRITING

Creating polished and readable essays, reports, and papers takes thought and effort but can be done by following some basic and well-established steps. The ReferencePoint Press Guide to Research and Writing introduces students to the key steps in that process including how to choose a topic and develop a thesis statement, what is involved in writing an outline, how to research a topic, and how to go about putting everything together to create a coherent and engaging piece of writing.

GUIDE TO CRITICAL READING—UNDERSTANDING OPINIONATED WRITING

Writing a paper, essay, or report requires research—and good research requires critical reading and critical thinking. The ReferencePoint Press Guide to Critical Reading—Understanding Opinionated Writing offers students insight into how they can become critical readers. It covers topics such as the importance of distinguishing facts from opinion, analyzing statistics, recognizing bias, and identifying styles of argumentation—all with an eye toward creating a new generation of critical thinkers.

COMMON CORE STANDARDS

ReferencePoint Press offers 500+ current, nonfiction titles for grades 5–12 in current events, science, health, history and high-interest paranormal topics. These high-quality titles are excellent resources that support the new Common Core Standards.  
Find out more about ReferencePoint titles and Common Core on our Common Core Standards page.