Thinking skills

A reasonable starting point for academic 'thinking skills' is Bloom's taxonomy which sets out a hierarchy of how we think and work with information we learn. An updated approach based on Bloom is here if you want to get more analytical about thinking in educational terms.

Critical thinking links
Critical thinking involves not just reading passively for information and treating information and ideas as neutral.

Monash University

Lingnan University in Hong Kong has activities to stimulate awareness of criticality when reading.

Reporting structures
When you comment on sources of ideas e.g. on the reading you have used to develop ideas, you need reporting structures such as verbs that mean something like "Chomsky claims ". You can find below some useful websites that help you with using such structures, including the important concept of showing stance such as endorsing something or distancing yourself from something.

https://canvas.sydney.edu.au/courses/12076/pages/unit-4-reporting-evidence

https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/Reporting%20Verbs%20Reference%20Sheet.pdf

Improving your thinking
There are thousands of ways to improve your ability to think, whether these relate to lifestyle (diet and sleep), approaches and strategies, self-improvement strategies (sometimes called meta-cognitive strategies), etc.

A list of strategies
Mind maps (and there are online tools such as mindmup.com)

Collaboration with others (example online tool https://voicethread.com/about/features/)