OC Thinking Skills: question types and how to practise

Thinking Skills is often the section parents find most unfamiliar. It does not test school knowledge; it tests how clearly a child can reason. In the OC test there are 30 questions in 30 minutes, each with 4 options.

Critical thinking questions

Strengthen or weaken an argument

Someone gives a reason and a conclusion. Children choose the statement that makes the argument stronger or weaker. Strategy: find the link between the reason and the conclusion; the right answer usually affects that link directly.

Assumptions

An assumption is a missing step the speaker relies on without saying it. Strategy: ask “what must be true for this conclusion to follow?”

Flaws in reasoning

A common flaw: “All winners built a model, so everyone who built a model won.” Strategy: check whether the conclusion goes further than the facts allow.

Must be true

Children choose the statement that must follow from the information. Strategy: draw circles (a simple Venn diagram) to see which groups must overlap.

Problem-solving questions

• Ordering and logic puzzles: draw a line or a grid and place the people with the most clues first.
• Truth-teller puzzles: test each possibility and count how many statements would be true.
• Codes: write the alphabet with numbers underneath (A = 1 … Z = 26).
• Patterns: look at the gaps between numbers, or follow one moving part at a time.
• Spatial reasoning: turns, reflections, paper folding and cube nets. Real paper, scissors and a mirror are the best teachers.

Practise each type separately: critical thinking, logic puzzles, spatial reasoning and patterns and codes.