Collaborative Task Sheets for Critical Thinking Skills Development of Grade 8 Students

Critical thinking is one of the most important skills that need to be addressed in the field of education .This paper presents collaborative task sheets in English that aim to develop the critical thinking skills of Grade 8 students. The least mastered critical thinking skills were identified and can be summarized into five namely; analyzing details, evaluating information, reasoning, decision-making and problem-solving. The main objective of this study was to design task sheets that were collaborative in nature which promoted the use of the students' critical thinking skills in several domains such as listening, reading, viewing, speaking and writing. These collaborative task sheets were generated with guide sheets for teachers as complimentary material in congruence with the learning competencies in Grade 8 English. It had undergone several phases such as planning, development, validation and revision in designing the instructional materials. The collaborative task sheets and teaching guide sheets were used in the Third Grading Period for two months to validate the collaborative task sheets. The task sheets were tried out in Quarter 3 in the three sections. The collaborative sheets were evaluated based on its language, objective and content by the teachers as expert validators and students as respondents and validators of the study. Students' comments on their observations and suggestions were useful in revision of the task sheets for final submission and for future reference. It was found out that learners' critical thinking are not fully developed, hence their academic performance was affected. The collaborative task sheet engaged the learners in critical thinking and created more significant experience with their peers. Learners must be adept in critical thinking to be globally competitive individual in school and beyond and must start early in life. Further research must be done on other ways or strategies and material preparation to improve the higher order thinking skills of students in a language classroom.