Higher order thinking skills include critical, logical, reflective, metacognitive, and creative thinking.

(watch Video) 21st Century Skills: Higher Order Thinking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQFsTA_luKc

Introduction Background

An important but challenging part of mathematics teaching is providing students with opportunities to engage in Higher Order Thinking. These include students asking thoughtful questions, participating in student-student and student-teacher substantiate conversations, applying existing knowledge, understanding and skills to closed and open problems or investigations and learning activities that deepen understanding of concepts.

ProcessGeorge Polya (How to Solve It, 1945) outlined important steps in problem solving: SEE - PLAN - DO – CHECK

While designed for problem solving, Polya's guide helps all higher order thinking in mathematics.

BLOOM’S TAXONOMY

One of the most important aspects of setting tasks and asking questions is to know what level of thinking you are requiring from your students.

In 1958, Benjamin Bloom created his thinking taxonomy for categorizing the level of abstraction of questions that commonly occur in the classroom.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy for Student Remember -- student is able to recall information

Understand -- student is able to explain information

Apply -- student is able to use information

Analyze -- student is able to differentiate information

Evaluate -- student is able to Justify a decision or a course of action

Design -- student is able to create new products, ideas or ways of seeing things.

How to Encourage HOTS? Involving teachers and parents

Answer children's questions in a way that promotes HOT

Use Strategies for enhancing higher order thinking

Evaluation/Assessment

Example of Answer children's questions in a way that promotes HOT Level 1: Reject the question

"Why do I have to eat my vegetables?"

"Don't ask me any more questions." "Because I said so."

Level 2: Restate or almost restate the question as a response

"Why do I have to eat my vegetables?"

"Because you have to eat your vegetables."

Level 3: Admit ignorance or present information

"I don't know, but that's a good question."

Or, give a factual answer to the question.

Level 4: Voice encouragement to seek response through authority

"Let's look that up on the internet."

"Let's look that up in the encyclopedia."

"Who do we know that might know the answer to that?"

Level 5: Encourage brainstorming, or consideration of alternative explanations

"Why are all the people in Holland so tall?"

"Let's brainstorm some possible answers."

"Maybe it's genetics, or maybe it's diet, or maybe everybody in Holland wears elevator shoes, or…" etc.

When brainstorming, it is important to remember all ideas are put out on the table. Which ones are "keepers" and which ones are tossed in the trashcan is decided later.

Level 6: Encourage consideration of alternative explanations and a means of evaluating them

"Now how are we going to evaluate the possible answer of genetics? Where would we find that information? Information on diet? The number of elevator shoes sold in Holland?"

Level 7: Encourage consideration of alternative explanations plus a means of evaluating them, and follow-through on evaluations

"Okay, let's go find the information for a few days — we'll search through the encyclopedia and the Internet, make telephone calls, conduct interviews, and other things. Then we will get back together next week and evaluate our findings."

Strategies for enhancing higher order thinking

Categorize concepts

Tell and show

Move from concrete to abstract and back

Teach steps for learning concepts

Go from basic to sophisticated

Expand discussions at home

Connect concepts

Teach inference

Teach Question-Answer Relationships (QARs)

Think and Search (Putting It Together):

The answer is not in the story

Clarify the difference between understanding and memorizing

Elaborate and explain

A picture is worth a thousand words

Make mind movies

Teach concept mapping and graphic organizers

Make methods and answers count

Methods matter

Identify the problem

Encourage questioning

Cooperative learning

Use collaborative strategic reading

Think with analogies, similes, and metaphors

Reward creative thinking

Use resources

Make students your partners

Story At School I-THINK

KSSR / KSSM (Kurikulum Standard Sekolah)

PPPM

Task Force

Post Mortem Research

I-think A program that increases a thinking skills among

students in order to produce a creative and innovative thinker.

I-THINK derive from innovative THINKing.

This program was created for increasing the ability of HOTS in order to accept PISA and TIMSS challenges.

KPM works together with Agensi Inovasi Malaysia to introduce this program.

Student be able to use 8 types of mind mapping

Mind Mapping Style Circle Map (Peta Bulatan)

Bubble Map (Peta Buih)

Double Bubble Map (Peta Buih Berganda)

Tree Map (Peta Pokok)

Brace Map (Peta Dakap)

Flow Map (Peta Alir)

Multi-flow Map (Peta Pelbagai Alir)

Bridge Map (Peta Titi)

What does we expect from this? Achievement increases

Focus

Active

Fun Learning

Relationship

Differences between HOTS and

NTSAfter reading a book about Martin Luther

King or studying the Civil Rights era, you

could choose to ask a child a simple

question such as “Who is Martin Luther

King, Jr.?”. When answering this question,

the child can simply provide facts that s/he

has memorized. Instead, to promote critical

thinking skills, you might ask them “Why do

you think that people view Martin Luther

King, Jr. as a hero of the civil rights era?”

to elicit a more well thought-out response

that requires them to apply, connect, and

synthesize the information they previously

learned.

Practicing Higher Order Thinking (HOT) skills outside

of school will give teens to understand, infer, connect,

categorize, synthesize, evaluate, and apply the

information they know to find solutions to new and

existing problems.

requiring different learning and teaching methods, such

as critical thinking and problem solving ,than the

learning of facts and concepts

Higher order and lower order applications An example of this is the use of the Internet. If used as an electronic

textbook it would be a lower order application as only lower order skills

are used .When learners engage in online collaboration they would be

using higher order thinking skills and therefore the Internet would be

used as a higher order application (Burns, 2006).

Higher order applications offer opportunities to analyse, evaluate and

solve problems and therefore offer more opportunities to practice

analytical and critical thinking skills. Spreadsheets and databases are

two examples of such applications. (Adams & Burns, 1999).

Another example is Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS was

brought into the new grade 10 Geography Curriculum with the purpose

of developing higher order thinking skills. Learners can study change

over time using a free GIS tool like Google Earth (Burns, 2006).

Education reform Including HOTS in learning outcomes.

Many forms of education reform, such as inquiry-based

science, reform mathematics and whole language

emphasize HOTS to solve problems and learn, sometimes

deliberately omitting direct instruction of traditional

methods, facts, or knowledge.

HOTS assumes standards based assessments that use open-

response items instead of multiple choice questions, and

hence require higher order analysis and writing.

HOTS is more difficult to learn or teach but also more

valuable because such skills are more likely to be usable in

novel situations.

Today the labour market demands people with higher order

thinking skills. These skills are of vital importance because

it is impossible to remember all the information we need for

future use.

Many educators believe that detailed knowledge will not be

as significant to tomorrow's workers and citizens as the

ability to learn and make sense of new information.

According to Resnick (1987) all individuals, not just the

elite, have the ability to become adept at thinking.

Why we need HOTS

FIN~~~