The purpose of the research was to design strategies that allow the development of critical thinking for the learning of mathematics in upper elementary school students. The same is of a quasi-experimental type that contemplates a methodology based on a quantitative approach, which allowed after the application of the proposal for four weeks, to analyze and explain the phenomenon under study through the application of objective tests of 10 items in a pretest and a posttest, applied to 156 tenth grade students of an educational unit in Ecuador, for the experiment were divided into two groups: 78 students in the control group and 78 students in the experimental group, which was subjected to an innovative proposal and traditional education. The post evaluation results of the scores obtained from the control group showed an overall average of 4.65 showing the lack of skills and cognitive tools to develop critical thinking. While, the experimental group reached an average of 7.63 after the implementation of the proposal, observing a significant improvement in their skills and qualities in the development of critical thinking, evolving positively with the criteria applied within the didactic guide. Finally, to test the hypothesis, the Anova statistical test was used, which concluded a direct relationship between the development of critical thinking and the learning of mathematics.
