Yew Chung International School of Beijing

Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

Overview

What is higher-order thinking?

De Bono’s Thinking Hats Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy Using HOT skills after reading Critical Thinking Review

Students of the future should be able to:

Solve problems Think creatively- invent and generate new ideas and knowledge Think critically- challenge, debate, refute Make decisions- compare, analyse, select, justify Analyse and evaluate information and ideas Plan for the future

What is Higher Order Thinking?• Higher-order thinking by students involves transforming existing

information and ideas into a real meaning for them.

• This happens when students take facts and ideas and synthesize, generalize, explain, or hypothesize to interpret them and reach their own conclusion.

• By using active learning, thinking strategies, Bloom’s taxonomy, and De Bono’s Thinking Hats we develop higher order thinking skills.

• When students produce their own knowledge they are using higher order thinking skills.

• When they recall information, copy or do rote learning, they are using lower order thinking skills.

• Citizens for the future need higher order thinking skills.

Higher Order Thinking is:

Creativity & Lateral Thinking

• Lateral thinking is specifically concerned with the generation of new perceptions and new ideas. Lateral thinking involves changing perceptions and flexibility. There is an overlap with creativity since both are concerned with producing something new, but lateral thinking is a more precise definition of the process of changing perceptions: changing the way we look at things.

Consider All Factors (CAF)• Try this example of a CAF situation:

• You are going to the grocer’s shop to run an errand for a grown up. While you’re on your way you meet a friend who is going to play with some others. They ask you to go along. At this point you are undecided. Do a CAF to see what factors you should consider before giving an answer.

Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI)

• Here is an activity you can do:

• What if we had 3 arms instead of 2?

• Work in pairs. One in each pair is to write. Generate as many Plus points as possible, then as many Minus points. Finally write down all the things that came up that were neither Plus, nor Minus but they were Interesting.

• How many points can your your partnership come up with?

Six Thinking Hats

Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats

De Bono’s Thinking HatsRed Hat Thinking

*  Emotions, feelings, hunches and intuition*  Feelings might alter over time after   discussion*  An individuals' feeling might be

mixed

  White Hat Thinking*  Facts, figures, information*  Neutral information*  What information do we have?*  What information is missing?*  How do we get the information we need?  *  Will the plan work?*  What are the dangers of this plan?

Blue Hat Thinking

*  Thinking about thinking*  Where are we now?* What is the next step

Yellow Hat Thinking

*  Advantages, benefits, savings*  What are the benefits - why?

Black Hat Thinking*  Concerned with reality. Cautious*  Do the conclusions follow from your evidence?*  Is your claim justified?*  Will the plan work?*  What are the dangers of this plan

Green Hat Thinking

*  Exploration, proposals, suggestions, new ideas*  Creative thinking*  Seeks to broaden the range of options before any one of them is pursued in more detail

An Example of Thinking Hats

If we were discussing the environment:

•Red Hat = What are my feelings about the being a guardian of the land?    

•White Hat = What are the facts about the aspect of the environment we are looking at?

•Blue Hat = What types of thinking and planning might we have to do in order to protect the environment?  

• Green Hat = How can we creatively approach the problems that we have discussed? What solutions might not have been tried yet?

•Black Hat =What questions or issues are there?

•Yellow Hat = What are the good things that we can see happening when the issues are dealt with? What will be the positive results?

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

• Higher-Order Thinking occurs at the top three levels of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy:

• Analysing • Evaluating• Creating

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

• CreatingGenerating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing thingsDesigning, constructing, planning, producing, inventing.

• EvaluatingJustifying a decision or course of actionChecking, hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging

• AnalysingBreaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationshipsComparing, organising, deconstructing, interrogating, finding

• ApplyingUsing information in another familiar situationImplementing, carrying out, using, executing

• UnderstandingExplaining ideas or conceptsInterpreting, summarizing, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining

• RememberingRecalling informationRecognizing, listing, describing, retrieving, naming, finding

• There are many every day opportunities to ask your child to conjecture, or to ‘think’ about the things around us.

• An example is when you are looking at something like condensation – ask, ‘Where do you think the water comes from?’

• Help your child look up the answers, rather than telling them the answers.

• Another way you can develop HOTS at home is through questions about books your child is reading.

• We can all read things we don’t understand. We can even answer lower level questions without understanding.

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How Can you Use Bloom’s Questions at Home?

Critical Thinking

• Critical Thinking includes:

• Understanding the logical connections between ideas

• Identifying, constructing and evaluating arguments

• Detecting inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning

• Solving problems systematically

• Identifying the relevance and importance of ideas

• Reflecting on the justification of one's own beliefs and values

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Thank You!

• To find out more about YCIS Beijing, please contact:

• (+86 10) 8585 3731

• enquiry@bj.ycef.com

• www.ycis-bj.com