 Criteria is essential because the critical thinking at its core is criteria thinking and it is important to help students in a couple of ways. One is how do we distinguish from a preference response or a critically thoughtful response? Well one is I can I can articulate why I made the decision that I made by saying well these are the criteria that I use. But secondly it actually helps students organize their thinking and be able to be thoughtful in their thinking. So if I were to ask a question you know what makes an effective leader, which would be a good critical thinking question, well what criteria would you use for a leader? Well if I wanted students to write me a paragraph response to my question is Stephen Harper an effective leader? I'm not asking you whether you like or dislike our Prime Minister, I'm asking you is he effective in his leadership? Well what what does that look like? Well is he decisive? Is he inclusive? And so on. So I might build a set of criteria. But now to help students organize their thinking I could say well paragraph one I'm going to address evidence of him being decisive and here's three supporting pieces and then I'm going to talk about being inclusive. And here's the evidence I would use to support whether he is or is not. By having criteria we begin to give students a structure for which they can respond. As opposed to students just starting to write lots of stuff on their test response. You know so instead of saying is Stephen Harper an effective leader? Defend your answer. Note the difference between is Stephen Harper an effective leader? What criteria would you use for an effective leader and use evidence to support? One provides an inherent structure for students to work with to develop a sound well thought out answer and one kind of invites throw what you've got at the paper and hopefully we'll find some marks in there. So I think criteria helps to focus students thinking helps give them structure to do that thinking helps them organize their thinking. It's a powerful tool for students to help them think more deeply and more organized ways.