Regarding critical theory and thinking, what we often do in my classes is go into the Allegory of the Cave, do activities like "Two Truths, One Lie", examining things from different angles but also questioning motivations.
For example, in my poetry class, I went off of a list of poems that are commonly assigned to college freshmen, and then after doing the typical analysis, I would open up discussion to have them question why these poems are assigned to college freshmen, if there's possibly an agenda, if there's subtext, or if it's simply to go with what's familiar, theme and such. It takes a little while for them to accept that yes, it's okay to question those things, but once they do they really get into it.