Acknowledging a growing national awareness of the need for direct instruction in higher order thinking skills within public education, this paper describes an instructional model for reinforcing thinking skills in the classroom, kindergarten through grade 12. Following an introduction justifying the model's reliance on the processing of information in linguistic form, the paper discusses the model's three general areas of thinking skills: basic concept development, recognition of patterns among ideas, and use of paradigms for specific educational tasks. It then discusses four specific areas in which a classroom using this model would differ from a more traditional classroom. The paper's conclusion reiterates that the model is a framework within which teachers can interact with students about information. (HTH)