The 6SA exercise draws on two key ideas. First, the idea that writing is an excellent way to clarify your thoughts and to make them visible to yourself. Therefore, the 6SA exercise is a writing exercise. Second, the idea that critical thinking means reflecting on the way you think, or in other words “thinking about thinking”. Therefore, the exercise includes peer reviews that let you reflect on arguments written by others. The fundamental goal of the exercise is to develop feedback literacy and a more critical perspective towards your own thinking and writing.
The 6SA exercise proceeds in two major steps. First, you write an argument in response to a case. This case confronts you with a decision situation where you are required to take a stance. You argue for your stance using a structure of exactly six sentences. Second, you review several 6SAs written by your peers. You evaluate whether their argument is sound by scoring each sentence against a detailed grading guideline. At the end of the exercise, you receive the peer reviews of your own 6SA, giving you a quantitative assessment as well as detailed feedback how your argument was received and evaluated by your peers.
The exercise will help you to achieve two specific learning goals:
- to be able to express an argument in a logical structure of six sentences
- to be able to provide detailed and constructive feedback on a six sentence argument
The following chapters prepare you for doing a 6SA exercise in five steps.
- Learn about the 6SA structure
- Write your first 6SA (includes assignment)
- Learn about the grading criteria
- Grade your own 6SA (includes assignment)
- Practice applying the grading criteria using pre-graded examples (includes assignment)
The following video summarizes our approach to develop critical thinking skills with the 6SA exercise:
