This trimester I'm currently teaching a class called Critical Thinking & Argumentation. The class is primarily juniors, and I knew I wanted the course to focus on research skills, critical reading skills, and written and verbal argument skills.
So far, I've discussed the critical reading strategy SQ3R on a previous post. We used that reading strategy at the very beginning of the year to read a chapter from a textbook that serves as the framework for the entire course.
The next reading strategy we used was the Central Question Diagram. I chose this strategy because it set the framework for our project up really well by introducing the students to the idea of a central question.
To introduce our week long research/argument project I chose an article about self-driving vehicles and gave students our central question, "Should research and development of autonomous cars continue?"
Students start at the top of the diagram by filling out the pros and cons with their own ideas or opinions. If students don't know a lot about the topic they may not have muh information in this section. It's OK to make assumptions here. It's not necessarily about the right answer, but about activating background knowledge and creating interest.
Next, students should read the article. I ask students to annotate as they read through the first time and set the diagram aside. Then we discuss any clarifying questions. When I prompt students to do their second read, I tell they they're searching for the pros and cons the author presents. They should list these pros and cons on the central question diagram. I allow either quoting or summarizing, but I do require proper in text citations for each pro/con entry.
For the article we read in class, students quickly realized that the author was very much against autonomous cars and the con side is quite full.
This strategy helps students analyze all sides of an issue before discussing or coming to a conclusion. You can also have students use the diagram to collect info from multiple articles on a single diagram.
Resources:
- Central Question Diagram Template
- Completed Central Question Diagram Example
- Central Question Diagram Step-by-step Video
Check out my Padlet page with other critical reading strategy resources.
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