Direct instruction involves specific activities employed to produce specific results. This tight coupling between stimulus and response lends itself most readily to the teaching of skills on a low cognitive level, for example, teaching a student to count, to recognize when a number is upside down, or to recognize the number word for a digit. Indeed, excessive usage of direct instruction for such elementary tasks has prompted critics of direct instruction to label such training as unsuitable for higher order thinking. This article demonstrates the use of direct instruction for the learning of critical thinking skills concerning time. Specifically, the clock face is drawn as a number line divided both into 12 and 60 equal segments. Critical skills can be taught with these six commands: Relate the face of the clock with the number line 12 for hours; relate the face of the clock with the number line through 60 for minutes; tell time by the hour; tell time by the minute; understand the difference between a.m. and p.m.; solve examples and word problems involving time. (orig.)