This book is one in a series of publications intended to help improve secondary instruction by addressing a central educational issue: teaching children how to think. This volume focuses specifically on how students can be encouraged and helped to think critically from the outset of learning to read in a foreign language. It draws on both recent cognitive research and examples of actual classroom practice to demonstrate how thinking is integral to successful learning even in the most basic and commonplace classroom situations. The first chapter describes one approach to teaching the days of the week in a Hebrew class. The second recommends taking advantage of two resources students bring to the learning of English as a Second Language: their first language and knowledge of the world. Chapter 3 explores connections between reading, thinking, and second language learning. Techniques for teaching thoughtful second language reading are discussed in chapter 4, and strategies for getting more from the printed text are examined in chpater 5. The sixth chapter addresses the assessment of reading comprehension. A 32-item bibliography is included. (MSE)