Explicit instruction in thinking skills must be a priority goal of all teachers. In this book, the author presents a framework of the five Rs: Relevancy, Richness, Relatedness, Rigor, and Recursiveness. The framework serves to illuminate instruction in critical and creative thinking skills for K-12 teachers across content areas. Each chapter treats one category of thinking skills. A chapter begins with a brief anecdote that illustrates the category, then discusses the skill, presents relevant life questions, and concludes by examining chosen strategies for the three thinking levels. Following an introduction, this book is divided into five parts. Part I, Relevance, presents: (1) About Relevance; (2) The Life Question; (3) Understanding Information--Skills of Comparing and Contrasting; (4) Generating Insight--Skills of Evaluating and Judging; and (5) Discerning Implications--Skills of Applying. Part II, Richness, continues with: (6) About Richness; (7) The Life Questions; (8) Understanding Information--Skills of Classifying, Sorting, and Ranking; (9) General Insight--Skills of Visualizing and Imagining; and (10) Discerning Implications--Skills of Creating, Innovating, and Inventing. Part III, Relatedness, continues with: (11) About Relatedness; (12) The Life Questions; (13) Understanding Information--Skill of Connecting; (14) Generating Insight--Skill of Forcing Relationships; and (15) Discerning Implications--Skill of Generalizing. Part IV, Rigor, continues with: (16) About Rigor; (17) The Life Questions; (18) Understanding Information--Skill of Explaining Why; (19) Generating Insight--Skill of Inferring; and (20) Discerning Implications--Skills of Sequencing and Predicting. Part V, Recursiveness, concludes with: (21) About Recursiveness; (22) The Life Questions; (23) Understanding Information--Skill of Analyzing; (24) General Insight--Skill of Making Analogies; and (25) Discerning Implications--Skill of Transferring. A conclusion, appendix A: Brainstorming and Planning Lessons, appendix B: Blacklines of Graphic Organizers, and a bibliography are also included.