A Case Study On The Cultivation Of Critical Thinking In Picture Book Teaching In Elementary School Lower Grade

Since the 1980 s,the critical thinking movement in the United States has expanded the influence of critical thinking to the whole world.Lippmann,a professor at Columbia University,created his own children’s stories and trained critical thinking in elementary schools.Paul,a leader of the international critical thinking movement,creatively proposed to integrate the specific skills and strategies of critical thinking into the adapted lesson plan and combine the cultivation of children’s critical thinking with the existing curriculum learning.The development of critical thinking movement has promoted the ideological trend of China’s teaching reform.Critical thinking has been listed as one of the 18 basic points of "core literacy" and it’s interpreted as problem consciousness;ability to think and judge independently;meticulous thinking,analyzing problems from multiple perspectives and making choices and decisions dialectically,etc.In view of this,this study makes a hypothesis that the specific skills and strategies of critical thinking can be integrated into the picture books that are popular among students and teach stories by adapting the teaching plans,which can not only achieve the goal of critical thinking training for elementary school students,but also solve the current situation of low thinking quality in the teaching of picture books.In order to verify the above hypothesis,this study first clarified the research background,purpose and significance through literature research,sought theoretical support,demonstrated the necessity and feasibility of the research,and strengthened the research confidence.Then,the class observation method is used to observe and reflect on the current situation of critical thinking cultivation in the teaching of picture books from the four dimensions of curriculum nature,class culture,teachers’ teaching behavior and students’ learning behavior.After that through the interview method,we can further understand and summarize the crux of the deficiency of critical thinking in the current picture book teaching.In addition to theoretical research,I also carried out targeted case studies.Through a section of picture book teaching,I adapted the teaching plan from multiple dimensions such as interpretation,description of teaching situations,discussion of teaching problems,improvement of teaching ideas and optimization of teaching links,and integrated critical thinking teaching,which achieved obvious results.The case study proves that the primary school picture book teaching can achieve the goal of critical thinking training by eliminating the obstacle of irrational tendency and cultivating students’ reflective and scientific questioning spirit.This study not only attaches importance to theoretical research and interpretation,but also to the study of practical strategies.The integration of knowledge and practice enables critical thinking training to be effectively integrated into the existing picture book teaching in elementary schools,so as to improve students’ thinking quality and ability.