Critical Thinking in Elementary Education: Useful Strategies

By Dr. Kathleen Tate  |  03/05/2026

Instructors and parents should focus on developing skills in critical thinking for young students between the age of five to nine years old. This work will prepare those children to advance their critical thinking abilities.

The Reboot Foundation suggests that although young learners are not ready for complicated reasoning or argument building, they do need a strong foundation to build high-level, vital critical thinking skills later in life.

What Are the Components of Teaching Critical Thinking?

Scholars Linda Elder and Richard Paul emphasized in their National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Social Education Journal article that the “most important challenge facing educators is an intellectual one – developing the minds of our students to promote skilled reasoning and intellectual self-discipline.” They argue that children equipped with the skills for critical thinking could make essential distinctions between these areas of a critical thinking framework:

• Real and unreal
• True and false
• Deep and superficial

There are subject/content area skills and concepts related to these three areas of the critical thinking framework that teachers may focus on with elementary school students.

Across elementary school curricula, various national professional organizations provide guidance for teaching critical thinking. NCSS’s three areas of critical thinking can be used as a critical thinking framework for all content areas and not just social studies.

Providing Guidance to What Is Real and Unreal

Social studies and language arts provide opportunities for children to develop critical thinking by focusing on what is real and what is not. In social studies, teachers may teach critical thinking by prompting children to research historical and current figures and events.

Helping children discern the quality of information by teaching them about primary source versus secondary source documents is one way to help even young students to develop critical thinking in the elementary classroom. These primary source documents include:

• Newspaper clippings
• Photos
• Diaries
• Interviews
• Letters
• Art
• Treaties
• Autobiographies

Also, children can develop information literacy and digital literacy skills when searching for and analyzing documents preserved at various websites such as DocsTeach.

Secondary source documents include textbooks, biographies, and documentaries. Instructors should encourage students to look at both primary and secondary source documents, then compare and analyze the sources to make sense of them.

The Library of Congress explains that many primary source documents are incomplete and may lack context, which should prompt learners to examine many sources, identify patterns, and construct understanding. Teachers should encourage children to question document sources, analyze any potential biases of those documents, and present evidence to support their conclusions.

Language Arts and Determining Real vs. Unreal

Critical thinking can apply to language arts when children analyze fiction genres (e.g., sci-fi and mystery) and non-fiction genres (e.g., autobiography and expository/informational) and fact versus opinion in books, articles, newspapers, and websites. Thought processes used for analysis in these areas can be reinforced when students evaluate whether any reading was created by artificial intelligence (AI) as well.

Developing AI Literacy in the Elementary Classroom

The Hechinger Report suggests defining AI literacy and ways to measure it. As teachers tweak curricula and lessons to focus more on discernment, analysis, critical thinking, ethical thinking, and evaluating what is real and not real in written text and media, assessment measures should be developed to see how children are doing with these skills along with identified indicators of AI literacy.

Professional and state-level K-12 organizations may help guide such efforts. For instance, in their National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) article, Dr. Christine Royce and Dr. Valerie Bennett discussed research trends showing that students who rely too much on AI have lower critical thinking scores.

AI should be used in purposeful, discerning ways to foster learning and not overused in ways that cause harm to cognition and critical thinking.

Dr. Royce and Dr. Bennett suggest that an overreliance on AI may lead to diminishing or bypassing “essential cognitive struggle of forming hypotheses, analyzing results, and drawing conclusions” in science.

Children need opportunities across different subject areas to develop critical thinking abilities in unique and overlapping ways. In addition, instructors will need to notice gaps and create meaningful opportunities to engage young minds, which will create a better educational experience for students.

Teaching Children the Difference Between True and False

Historically, true and false quizzes and tests have been a substantial part of classrooms. Examining truths and falsehoods are at a new level now.

Children must learn to navigate news, media, and written texts and determine what is accurate and what is not. They must be equipped to determine what is fact-based versus opinion and be aware of misinformation and disinformation.

Having in-class debates where children research topics first and prepare to discuss different viewpoints is a great way to help develop their critical thinking. They can learn to:

• Use varied sources and evaluate their accuracy
• Fact-check
• Argue for or against perspectives

In social studies courses, these evaluations and debates may be for historical, current, or potential future events.

Science Courses and Fostering Critical Thinking about True vs. False

In science classes, classroom discussions may include researching facts, proving hypotheses in experiments, and solving problems. Such inquiry-based activities where children make predictions and analyze data help promote critical thinking skills.

Young children need opportunities to:

• Think
• Post and answer questions
• Make connections
• Communicate (e.g., discuss or present their findings)
• Share ideas

To become more scientifically literate citizens, children need to explore potential solutions to future challenges. For instance, elementary-age children may learn about technology tools used in everyday life at home and school and imagine possible directions in which those tools might develop over time.

They might study digital footprints and real-life situations in which technology may be useful but also problematic. Any problem-solving they pursue can be grounded in verifiable facts they learn about through:

• Interviewing technology experts, scientists, and engineers
• Reading
• Researching information

AI, Fact Checking, and Critical Thinking Skills

Part of AI literacy and determining what is real and not real includes validating sources. Elementary school lessons should include activities that teach, model, and foster student exploration online, in the classroom, and in the library to make sure AI statements can be verified. In addition, learners should check statements and identify whether they are facts, opinions, or falsehoods.

It might help children for instructors to teach source validation using a fun theme such as investigator/sleuth or treasure hunt. Themed papers and props may motivate students of all ages to apply their information and digital literacy skills and fact-check sources using AI tools, websites, books, and articles.

As children become accustomed to traditional and AI-focused fact checking over time, that should develop into a natural part of their writing, science, and social studies projects.

Teaching Deep vs. Superficial to Elementary Students

The final component of the NCSS critical thinking framework is prompting children to investigate, reason, and question information. Such instruction along with reflection and evaluation of those processes help move learners from a superficial understanding to a deep understanding about people and events. Students need to study topics with depth and breadth, so they can apply their education in the classroom or beyond it through action.

Elementary Classrooms and Critical Thinking Instruction

There are many ways to structure deep critical thinking skills in the elementary classroom.

In social studies across different grade levels, the curriculum is typically structured to connect historical and current figures and events to children’s personal lives. In early grades, children move from self and family to neighborhood and community, while students in middle grades move to city and state. In the upper elementary levels, the emphasis tends to expand to national and international topics.

When a state curriculum differs from this structure, it is important for instructors to have knowledge about student development and personalized learning to help connect topics in meaningful ways. For example, if the study of Greece is included in a third-grade curriculum, international aspects should be explored and explained through the context of city for more concrete associations.

The Multi-Modal Classroom of Inquiry

Multi-modal resources and experiences help bring facts and ideas to life while engaging young minds. For instance, everyday lessons should incorporate:

• Artifacts
• Photos
• Songs
• Videos
• Speeches
• Art and other visuals
• Field trips and virtual field trips

In addition to covering rich content and providing engaging, meaningful opportunities, instructors should plan before lessons. They should also have open-ended questions ready to pose before, during, and after students perform tasks.

Allotting time for children to answer questions, access a variety of texts (e.g., websites, books, articles, and brochures), and provide evidence for their answers should lead to deeper understanding of classroom material. Furthermore, students should be encouraged to pose questions to one another, which will expand student-to-student interactions beyond traditional teacher-to-student dialogue.

Teaching in more comprehensive ways with images, props, themes, multi-faceted experiences, and ongoing questions and responses allows for richer student engagement. It will also help instructors to avoid the superficial coverage of concepts.

The Arts and Critical Thinking Skills

Vital critical thinking skills in the elementary classroom may be addressed with, through, and about the arts, a concept that experts such as Merryl Goldberg support. Young students often enjoy arts-based, hands-on activities and participate in ways that build their self-esteem as there is no one way to draw, paint, create, improvise, pantomime, dance/move, role play, and use music or musical instruments to help create meaning in projects and skits.

As a result, more students – including students with disabilities or students who struggle with reading comprehension – are motivated, engaged, and included in the general classroom. At the same time, they learn meaningful content.

In art-based instruction and in general, essential skills even young students need to develop include:

• Observing
• Analyzing
• Problem-solving
• Creating

Observing

Children observe animals, plants, and experiments during science instruction. Spending time observing paintings, photos, sculptures, and drawings and identifying artists’ styles, for example, reinforces observation skills in science and other subject areas.

Teaching lessons and units with themes and integrating artists’ work helps students to build connections. If studying plant life, paintings of sunflowers by male and female artists across time and countries in Impressionism, Realism, and Modern Art eras deepen connections to observing details needed for science. For example:

• Are the sunflowers depicted with accuracy?
• What are the parts and functions of them?
• Are the sunflowers painted or drawn in realistic ways?

Analyzing

Students should use established subject-area vocabulary correctly along with their own words to express their observations when analyzing classroom materials. They should be encouraged to find patterns in science, math, art, history, and everyday life, as well as find the similarities and differences across and within themes they study.

In social studies, critical thinking skills advance when children analyze topics such as the causes of a war and pantomime those in small groups after reading and researching. They can then view relevant drawings, art, and photos to gain deeper understanding, which goes beyond just summarizing and retelling events.

Problem-Solving

Whether students read fiction or non-fiction in language arts, there are opportunities to pause in stories and texts and make predictions about what is next. Children can take on the perspectives of different characters or significant figures, then explore problems and possible solutions before continuing to read to the end of a story’s plot or historical situation. Perspective-taking requires higher-order thinking skills.

For this type of problem-solving, children may:

• Draw solutions
• Improvise those solutions in small groups
• Prepare and present them in skits
• Use creative movement or dance to express their ideas

Combining these approaches with discussing, questioning, and writing creates a more comprehensive educational experience for students and is helpful for engaging young minds.

Creating

The ultimate skill in school and across most professions is creativity and creation. Critical thinkers need opportunity, time, and space to apply their lessons and create. Creativity allows new possibilities and thinking to emerge in a child’s mind, and critical thinking prompts refining those ideas.

Imagine that there is a local environmental issue about a diminishing of bees in a community. Children could apply their education by making informative:

• Poems
• Songs
• Plays for the community

Creating a product and evaluating it during the creation process draws on critical thinking skills. In this way, science is more interesting, active, and profound for children because they are learning science through using the arts.

Young children deserve academic rigor in classroom instruction, along with a curriculum and activities that challenge their minds. Their prior knowledge should be expanded using strategies that call for them to be critical thinkers and innovators at school, which should carry over to their everyday home, community, and future lives.

The Master of Education in Teaching at APU

For educators who want to further develop their teaching skills, learn about critical thinking frameworks, and discover how to better engage young minds, American Public University (APU) offers an online Master of Education in Teaching. The courses for this master’s program include classroom management for the 21st century, different perspectives on teaching and communicating, and powerful technology applications for the active learning environments. Other courses include maximizing student achievement through effective assessment, co-teaching and collaboration for all learners, and research methods in education.

This academic program has eight concentrations so that students can choose the concentration that suits their professional goals. These concentrations include elementary reading and curriculum and instruction for elementary teachers.

For more information about the Master of Education in Teaching, visit APU’s education degree program page.

Note: This program has specific admission requirements.