Critical thinking doesn't just happen. You have to consciously plan for it by including opportunities in your instructional plans. To provide practice for your students, you need to make sure they have some understanding of the topic or concept. Once they have knowledge, they can move on to higher-order thinking skills, including application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. To create more critical thinking opportunities for your students, you can: Stimulate student thinking by asking them to come up with multiple solutions or answers to problems and questions. Turn the tables on them by asking them to create a quiz or assignment for a lesson. Use verbs in directing student activities that require critical thinking, such as: translate, predict, prioritize, compare, create, rearrange, debate, justify, recommend, for example. Expose students to a variety of media related to lesson content, including newspapers, magazines, videos, games, websites, CDs, and art. These different expressions of information provide students with a wealth of background to relate to what they are learning. Invite dynamic people to visit your classroom as "guest instructors." Provide time for students to discuss or write about what they thought of the experience.