New Colorado P-12 Academic Standards

Prepared Graduates: (Click on a Prepared Graduate Competency to View Articulated Expectations) - (Remove PGC Filter)

• Articulate the position of self and others using experiential and material logic

Concepts and skills students master:

2. Logical arguments distinguish facts from opinions; and evidence defines reasoned judgment

Inquiry Questions:

1. How do authors measure the quality of their argument along the way?
2. What criteria do authors use to evaluate the quality of their reasoning? (clarity, validity, logic, relevance, completeness, depth, breadth)
3. When have you last heard a "pitch" based predominantly using assumption?
4. When can a scattered argument ever be successful?

Relevance & Application:

1. Editors at news agencies synthesize alternate views and vast appeals in order to make concise weekly editorials.
2. Expensive purchases such as a car, home or college education are usually made after a first impressions and false evidence have been eliminated.
3. Rhetorical devices are usually practiced and refined in most professions and jobs in order to advance reasoned activity.
4. Recognizing the difference between primary and secondary sources and analyzing primary sources applying our own knowledge and perspective can lead to deeper understanding.

Nature Of:

1. Researchers are consumers of information.
2. Researchers are generators of information.
3. Investigative thinkers careful attend to language and the influence of bias or false premises

Prepared Graduates: (Click on a Prepared Graduate Competency to View Articulated Expectations) - (Remove PGC Filter)

• Articulate the position of self and others using experiential and material logic

Concepts and skills students master:

3. Monitoring the thinking of self and others is a disciplined way to maintain awareness

Inquiry Questions:

1. Why is it important to understand what others are thinking?
2. Describe a situation where you had a different perspective than one of your friends?
3. Why do presenters have to be clear about their thinking for others to understand what they are trying to convey?
4. If speakers want to share information, how do they determine what may be relevant to the conversation?

Relevance & Application:

1. Students who monitor their thinking are able to select from various strategies to improve comprehension.
2. When researchers listen to others, they increase their own learning.
3. When people evaluate and assess their own thinking (metacognition), they gain clarity in their understanding.
4. Use online tools to monitor the writings of professionals in areas of personal interest.

Nature Of:

1. Researchers monitor what they are thinking so that they can be fair and unbiased.
2. Researchers' own clarity of thought brings clear communication in speaking and writing.
3. Presenters exercise persistence with new ideas even though it feels frustrating or difficult at first.

Prepared Graduates: (Click on a Prepared Graduate Competency to View Articulated Expectations) - (Remove PGC Filter)

• Articulate the position of self and others using experiential and material logic

Concepts and skills students master:

2. Identifying and evaluating concepts and ideas have implications and consequences

Inquiry Questions:

1. How do people decide on and use credible, relevant, appropriate, accurate, and valid information?
2. How do people explain the implications and concepts used by themselves and others, including authors?

Relevance & Application:

1. Concepts are used daily to make sense of the world. Lack of clarity with concepts perpetuates misunderstanding.
2. Accurate in-depth comprehension relies on the ability to analyze and differentiate concepts.
3. Messages communicated through reading and writing have implications that require exploration.
4. Use electronic productivity tools to illustrate and convey concepts and your own ideas.

Nature Of:

1. Researchers know all reasoning is expressed through and shaped by concepts, and lead somewhere or have implications and consequences.
2. Researchers understand the language used in documents is important.

Prepared Graduates: (Click on a Prepared Graduate Competency to View Articulated Expectations) - (Remove PGC Filter)

• Articulate the position of self and others using experiential and material logic

Concepts and skills students master:

2. Identifying implications, concepts, and ideas enriches reasoning skills

Inquiry Questions:

1. What are the implications or what might happen if someone takes action about an issue?
2. What are the consequences of the action?
3. How do students identify key concepts and ideas?
4. How do students know they clearly understand the concepts and topics?
5. What problems may arise if students use only their own thinking in their work?
6. How do students include the perspectives, thinking, or opinions of others as they learn?
7. How does elaborating help others understand a concept with more clarity?
8. What strategy do readers use to help them identify the key concepts or main ideas of a text?

Relevance & Application:

1. Concepts and ideas may reflect prior knowledge and experiences.
2. Presenters are able to clarify what is useful when speaking or writing.
3. When asked to share ideas, presenters must be precise and share key points so that others will be able to follow their information.
4. People must ask questions of themselves and of others for the purpose of quality understanding and reasoning.
5. People who put their thinking or the thinking of a favorite author or researcher aside to entertain other thinking use a fair-minded way to gain understanding.
6. Good communicators acknowledge that further reading or research can increase their depth of understanding.

Nature Of:

1. Researchers understand that clear concepts and ideas must be supported with facts.
2. All reasoning is expressed through and shaped by concepts, and leads somewhere or has implications and consequences.
3. Good communicators are able to state the issue or concept, elaborate on it, and have an example to clearly express their thinking.

Prepared Graduates: (Click on a Prepared Graduate Competency to View Articulated Expectations) - (Remove PGC Filter)

• Articulate the position of self and others using experiential and material logic

Concepts and skills students master:

2. Purpose, information, and questions about an issue are essential steps in early research

Inquiry Questions:

1. What is the purpose? Is the purpose clear? Is the purpose important in relation to the question at issue?
2. What is the question at issue? Is the question important and related to the purpose?
3. Is the information being gathering important to the question at issue and purpose?
4. Is the information free from error?
5. How do students improve their thinking?
6. Why is it important to be clear about the reason for studying a certain topic?
7. When people are learning new information, why is it important that the data is correct?
8. What might happen if people use incorrect or unsupported information?

Relevance & Application:

1. Before readers begin to read, they ask themselves purposeful questions. (What is the purpose for learning how to read? Am I clear on the purpose for reading? Is reading important?)
2. Zoologists know that new knowledge about animals and the discovery of new species require them to ask good questions every day.

Nature Of:

1. People who reason understand that reasoning has a purpose, is based on information, and is an attempt to figure something out.
2. Curiosity and thinking help people to discover and understand things that puzzle them.

Prepared Graduates: (Click on a Prepared Graduate Competency to View Articulated Expectations) - (Remove PGC Filter)

• Articulate the position of self and others using experiential and material logic

Concepts and skills students master:

3. Quality of thinking depends on the quality of questions

Inquiry Questions:

1. How does this relate to the problem?
2. How does that bear on the question?
3. How does that help to resolve the issue?
4. Is this the most important question to consider?
5. How could check on that?
6. How could we find out if that is true?
7. How could verify or test that?
8. Could the source illustrate what he/she means?
9. What does it mean to be fair-minded?

Relevance & Application:

1. People ask clarifying questions to think better.
2. People think about clear ideas by asking questions.

Nature Of:

1. Researchers understand that for thinking to improve, it is necessary to ask critical questions.
2. All reasoning has a purpose based on information and an attempt to figure something out.