Thinking Skills & Key Concepts is a new, standards-based series from the authors of our widely acclaimed Building Thinking Skills® series. It is a research-based instructional program that teaches beyond most state and Common Core standards by: Improving young children’s observation and description skills Developing academic vocabulary Developing thinking skills that underlie content learning (describing/defining, identifying similarities and differences, sequencing, and classifying) Improving students’ understanding of key concepts in Mathematics, Social Studies, and Science Completing structured exercises to write sentences and paragraphs Observation Skills Observation lessons involve concrete examples using detailed photographs which can be supplemented with picture books to develop observation skills. The student book provides pencil and paper exercises, but students clarify their thinking and learning by peer and class discussion. Academic Vocabulary Development The program builds academic vocabulary and mental models of important concepts. Students describe, compare and contrast, and classify geometric shapes, family members,occupations, animals, food, vehicles, and buildings. Spatial Thinking Skills Describing Shapes – naming shapes, finding shapes to match a description, describing characteristics of a shape Similarities and Differences – matching and combining shapes, producing equal figures, figure completion Sequences – recognizing and producing the next figure in a sequence Classification – classifying by shape and/or color, forming classes, depicting overlapping classes Using positional and directional words Verbal Thinking Skills Describing Things – matching a picture to a description, describing people, animals, or objects shown in pictures, part/whole analysis Similarities and Differences – selecting similar people, animals, or objects, explaining similarities and differences Sequences – ranking objects or people by a significant characteristic Classifications – explaining characteristics of a class, exceptions, sorting into classes Mental Models Mental Models outline the characteristics needed to describe or define a concept. Each level teaches the significant characteristics of the concepts outlined in these mental models, but the first grade book explores each concept in greater depth.