Intellikit teaches students to excel at the most fundamental and permeating aspect of all education: the ability to think clearly and effectively. At the heart of all thinking - whether it is about fiction, nonfiction, global issues, or the history and culture of a country - is the ability to approach and evaluate issues from a variety of perspectives. This is precisely what students need to learn and precisely what Intellikit teaches.

Intellikit is a multi-tiered system for 2nd through 8th grade. There are three books (one for grades 2-4, one for 5-6, and one for 7-8), each a compilation of short fictional stories, all designed to teach students how to become effective thinkers. Our method is simple but uniquely successful (a demonstration can illustrate this in mere minutes).

In each story students encounter characters confronted with a dilemma of moral, social, or political import. Students are confronted not only with the different positions characters take on an issue, but the reasons, the reasoning, behind holding the positions they do. Students come to understand what the problem is, how the problem arose, and what different characters in the story want to do to resolve the problem.

Students are asked, through questions seeded throughout the story, to "Think About It!" These "Think About It!" questions - which are of the highest order in Bloom's Taxonomy - ask the student to explain the problem and what the characters think about it. Most importantly, these questions ask the student to evaluate the problem and the different arguments presented. Students are instructed to record their answers in a journal and to discuss their thoughts with other classmates.

In our 2nd - 4th grade story about animal rights, a town becomes infected with the "Cubonic Plague." A child in the town, Paul, becomes infected and receives a visit from the town's leading doctor, Dr. Vernon. Dr. Vernon tells Paul he's doing a lot of testing on animals in an attempt to find a cure. Paul greets this information hesitantly, and responds by saying such methods are not fair to animals who do not deserve to be treated that way. Dr. Vernon replies that if such methods were not used, many more humans would die. The story is then put on hold while the student is asked to evaluate each perspective with questions like: "Is it okay for humans to use animals to try to find a cure for a disease? Why or why not?"

The story continues with the doctor finding a cure and people returning to their normal lives. After a few weeks, however, people start getting sick again. Dr. Vernon does more research and finds that the land was contaminated and the town's only chance for survival lies in moving to a nearby forest, which entails destroying the forest and kicking out all its inhabitants. The story ends here and we ask students similar questions about deforestation.

In later grades new wrinkles of the issue are revealed. For example, in the 5th - 6th grade story, we raise the issue of whether humans are more important than animals. In the 7th - 8th grade version, we propose a distinction between what we need (cures for diseases) and what we want (such as leather shoes), as well as look at the sanctity of nature and the evolutionary process.

See the samples section of our site to read our stories in full.

Our key to success is the manner in which we engage students. We give them stories with interesting characters, exciting plots, and new issues. Our curriculum piggy-backs on something students already enjoy: thinking and talking about interesting stories with their friends. In thinking about and discussing our unique stories, they engage with important issues and problems from a variety of perspectives.

Students gain the ability to think clearly and effectively, to communicate their ideas with others, and to think seriously about important issues. Moreover, students learn how to engage with arguments, how to reveal flaws in reasoning, and how to understand and think through an issue. Whether students are trying to understand a story, understand a culture, or understand another person, the skills they need are the same, and these skills are precisely the ones Intellikit cultivates.