As one of the first assignments this year I was tasked with writing an essay about how and why people change their minds. In this essay I had to use examples from several readings about how the heliocentric view of the solar system became popular. But I also had to be very careful to make sure the essay was still about my claim instead of being about how the heliocentric view caught on.
The 21st century skill that I personally used the most in doing this assignment was critical thinking. Before even writing the essay I had to organize a ton of examples and ideas from the sources I had just read. After that I had to look at all of those notes and come up with a claim biased on how the heliocentric model gained popularity. And last, but certainly not least, I had to make sure that the ideas between paragraphs were related so the essay wouldn't be too choppy.
I'm personally pretty proud that I actually managed to formulate an original claim and support it without falling into the trap of writing about the history of the heliocentric model.
The largest way that I was able to improve upon my critical thinking skills during this assignment was by getting better at trusting my own judgement. When I started writing this essay I constantly found myself asking if the claim I was attempting to prove was the "right" claim. Or if I somehow chose wrong and my essay was simply incorrect. In fact, the most difficult part about completing this assignment was starting my essay. Because I was so afraid of making an incorrect central claim. But by the end of writing this essay I realized that the use of critical thinking in writing isn't the same as how critical thinking is used in subjects like math. So I learned to change my approach to thinking critically in writing.
If I could start over and change one thing about how I wrote this essay I would take some time to proof read my essay more thoroughly. If I had done that I would've caught some grammar errors that made it into the final draft.
If there is a particular assignment in the past that I can relate writing this essay to it'd have to be the final assessment of a Philosophy 100 course that I took last year. In that paper I had to use examples from The Matrix to talk about philosophies from great thinkers like David Hume and Rene Descartes.
I plan on applying everything I learned in writing this essay to just about any essay, that I need to write in my last year of high school and through out college.
The 21st century skill that I personally used the most in doing this assignment was critical thinking. Before even writing the essay I had to organize a ton of examples and ideas from the sources I had just read. After that I had to look at all of those notes and come up with a claim biased on how the heliocentric model gained popularity. And last, but certainly not least, I had to make sure that the ideas between paragraphs were related so the essay wouldn't be too choppy.
I'm personally pretty proud that I actually managed to formulate an original claim and support it without falling into the trap of writing about the history of the heliocentric model.
The largest way that I was able to improve upon my critical thinking skills during this assignment was by getting better at trusting my own judgement. When I started writing this essay I constantly found myself asking if the claim I was attempting to prove was the "right" claim. Or if I somehow chose wrong and my essay was simply incorrect. In fact, the most difficult part about completing this assignment was starting my essay. Because I was so afraid of making an incorrect central claim. But by the end of writing this essay I realized that the use of critical thinking in writing isn't the same as how critical thinking is used in subjects like math. So I learned to change my approach to thinking critically in writing.
If I could start over and change one thing about how I wrote this essay I would take some time to proof read my essay more thoroughly. If I had done that I would've caught some grammar errors that made it into the final draft.
If there is a particular assignment in the past that I can relate writing this essay to it'd have to be the final assessment of a Philosophy 100 course that I took last year. In that paper I had to use examples from The Matrix to talk about philosophies from great thinkers like David Hume and Rene Descartes.
I plan on applying everything I learned in writing this essay to just about any essay, that I need to write in my last year of high school and through out college.