Building Thinking Skills

This series develops critical thinking skills necessary for success in reading, writing, math, science, social studies, and standardized tests. These award-winning books comprise the bestselling thinking skills program in the world! The engaging, highly-effective activities are developmentally sequenced. Each skill (for example, classifying) is presented first in the semi-concrete figural-spatial form and then in the abstract verbal form. Students also learn important academic vocabulary, concepts, and skills as they analyze relationships between objects, between words, and between objects and words by: 
     - Observing, recognizing, and describing characteristics
     - Distinguishing similarities and differences
     - Identifying and completing sequences, classifications, and analogies

These processes help students develop superior thinking and communication skills that lead to deeper content learning in all subjects.

LEVEL 1 (Grades 2-3) | LEVEL 2 (Grades 4-6)
  Figural-Spatial Skills

• Describing shapes
• Figures: compare/describe/copy/enlarge/divide
• Diagrams: overlapping classes/Venn/branching/cycle
• Mental pattern folding/symmetry
• Directionality/Position in space
• Mental rotation/reflection/tumbling/stacking/folding of 2-D objects
• Congruence/area/volume
• Analogies: size/color/orientation/detail
• Visual motor integration and memory
• Use of graphic organizers

  Verbal Skills

• Spelling/Vocabulary/Writing:  describing things and words
• Following and writing 1-, 2-, and 3-step directions
• Antonyms/synonyms
• Analogies: kind of/part of/used to/association/action
• Deductive/Inductive reasoning
• Parts of a whole
• Map reading
• Writing directions
• Logic: if-then/yes-no/true-false
• Orientation: person/place/time
• Auditory memory
• Language acquisition

LEVEL 3 FIGURAL (Grades 7-12+)
  Figural-Spatial Skills

• Describing shapes
• Figures: compare/describe/copy/enlarge/divide
• Diagrams: overlapping classes/Venn/branching/cycle
• Mental pattern folding/symmetry
• Directionality/Position in space
• Mental rotation/reflection/tumbling/stacking/folding of 2-D objects
• Congruence/area/volume
• Analogies: size/color/orientation/detail
• Visual motor integration and memory
• Use of graphic organizers
• Symmetry/Tessellation of solids

LEVEL 3 VERBAL (Grades 7-12+)
  Verbal Skills

• Spelling/Vocabulary/Writing:  describing things and words
• Following and writing 1-, 2-, and 3-step directions
• Antonyms/synonyms
• Analogies: kind of/part of/used to/association/action
• Deductive/Inductive reasoning
• Parts of a whole
• Map reading
• Writing directions
• Logic: if-then/yes-no/true-false
• Orientation: person/place/time
• Auditory memory
• Language acquisition
• Denotation and connotation/degree of meaning