How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

Petruchio

As a teacher, I wonder if it is possible to instill this skill into students the skills of rationality and critical thinking. I teach the third grade, and it is not immediately apparent how to apply this with my own class.

The problems I foresee are as follows:

Young children often do not know the basics on the subject which they are learning, be it math, science, art, religion, literature etc.
Many children are very shy, and try to give as short of an answer as doable to a verbal prompt.
Written prompts are arduous, straining the attention span and writing capabilities of the students. This is not a bad thing, but it presents difficulties in the economy of time and material to be presented.
Attention spans in general are very short.
Experiments can be very infrequent, and nigh impossible with certain subjects.
Children, at this age, are likely to take the words of a parent or teacher at face value, and naturally parrot it back. This may be a hard habit to break.

In the sequences, it is suggested teachers should drill into students words don't count, only anticipation-controllers. How practical is this for an elementary school level? Also appreciated would be any ideas or experiences on how to do this, or how to combat the above problems. Hearing from other teachers would be excellent especially.

The problems I foresee are as follows:

Young children often do not know the basics on the subject which they are learning, be it math, science, art, religion, literature etc.
Many children are very shy, and try to give as short of an answer as doable to a verbal prompt.
Written prompts are arduous, straining the attention span and writing capabilities of the students. This is not a bad thing, but it presents difficulties in the economy of time and material to be presented.
Attention spans in general are very short.
Experiments can be very infrequent, and nigh impossible with certain subjects.
Children, at this age, are likely to take the words of a parent or teacher at face value, and naturally parrot it back. This may be a hard habit to break.

I can remember believing very weird things before school age, just as when my grand-mother told me that gravity is because of Earth's rotation. I tried to verify that experimentally with a globe, but in spite of the failure to attract things to the globe I continued to believe the explanation for some time, concluding that Earth has to rotate very fast.

I am, on the other hand, not aware of losing any skill at school. Not sure about others, but in the third grade they didn't seem any more stupid than in the first. But of course, I might have had lost even the ability to observe critical thinking during the time.

When individual students were called upon, which group was more likely to hazard a guess, to try to reason through an answer?

2mwengler14y

I agree I gained critical thinking skills throughout my childhood, much more aided by school than impeded. Science was science. I had a 5th grade science teacher who was an idiot, but when I argued with him over his stupidities, he didn't shut me down, he argued back. And all along I was learning that this was a description of the world and the world, not some authority, got the last say. Not all kids are going to be as good at critical thinking as all other kids. This is not a failure of the education system, it is a failure of the human race. The best a system can do is add a delta in the right direction, on average, to most of us. My kids are pretty normal girls, but they are reasonable arguers and don't believe stupid stuff. This latter from training if I do say so myself. They think their opinions matter and so they put some effort in to them.

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How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

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How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

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