I’ve been teaching critical thinking for many years, and I’ve developed a short, free, Creative Commons-licensed text that’s useful for a brief (maybe 3 week?) critical thinking section in any intro philosophy or composition course (or really, just about any course; it’s been used at my college by professors from a number of departments.) I thought I should make it accessible here, in case anyone is interested.
Critical Thinking: Primary Concepts
There’s no instructor’s manual with this text, so it’s for use by teachers who already have some background in critical thinking, though I’ve given it to instructors with no such background and they told me they found it helpful and they were able to make use of it. I’ll probably work up an instructor’s manual shortly, so that this text could have more general use, and will post it here when it’s ready.
It’s fairly modular, so some parts of it can be excised and used without the rest. I’ve had a lot of success with the section on teaching necessary and sufficient conditions, and generally found that one class day with that, combined with regular, contextual reinforcement, gets the idea across.
Popular Metaphysics 