Critical Thinking 101: Logic and Argumentation (4-Week Course, 8-12 Y/O)

Critical Thinking: Logic and Argumentation (4 Week Course 8-12 Y/O's)
Teacher Nathan Saint Ours MA

In this course, I will use power point slides and lectures to teach students basic logical concepts. I will also encourage in-class discussion and exercises that help students practice what they have learned. I advise that students take my single-day course on Introduction to Logic prior to taking this 4 week course, but this is not necessary. We will go into everything that I teach in the single course in more detail here. My schedule for this course will be flexible so that I can meet the needs of the students and teach them at their pace. 

Week 1: What is an argument? This week we will learn about logical statements, premises, conclusions, and the structure of proper logical arguments. The students will practice coming up with arguments on their own and they will learn to differentiate arguments from simple statements. We will also learn about validity/invalidity and soundness/unsoundness. 

Week 2: This week we will practice writing arguments in standard form. We will practice reading passages that have arguments in them and I will ask the students to write each of the arguments that they find in standard form. This exercise will help students learn to identify logical statements and arguments in articles and blogs and determine if what they read is valid or not. 

Week 3: The students will learn the difference between inductive and deductive arguments. They will practice identifying and providing examples of each. They will also be introduced to some basic fallacies that can be applied to each argument. They will learn more about different types of premises that can be used in arguments (empirical, testimonial, definitional). We will also practice evaluating premises in order to determine their strength and scope. This week's overall theme is "degrees of certainty," or "how certain are we?"

Week 4: As homework prior to this class, which is our last, I will have each student find an argument, from any source, that they wish to discuss. I will have each student present their argument and evaluate it using what we have learned in class. I will take time during this last section to introduce practical extensions of logic so that students can know how the basic principles that we learned in class can be used moving forward in their studies.