KEYS to Teaching Success: Higher Order Thinking

Higher Order Thinking Overview

In a different segment of KEYS to Teaching Success, you read about ways to make learning relevant to students, either by establishing connections to their prior learning, to their everyday lives, or to other subjects [See "Make Learning Relevant"]. These connections can be initial ways to elevate student thinking. If learning matters to students, or if students realize how concepts have an actual impact on them, they can be motivated to think more deeply about skills and concepts. Such thinking levels are reflected under Intern KEYS Performance Indicator 1.2. Teachers often refer to such thinking as critical thinking or higher-order thinking skills (HOTS).

Even though teachers and students use those terms often, it’s difficult to explain what that concept really means. How do we know when students are really thinking critically? According to Daniel Willingham (2019), teachers can look for the following evidence:

Students think in new ways or explore new resources instead of relying solely on their memory or personal experiences.
Their thinking is “self-directed,” which means that they actively engage in learning instead of simply repeating language or following a teacher’s directions.
Finally, their thinking amounts to actual results, solutions, or change.

Planning and Instructional Considerations

Designing specific learning activities can elevate students’ thinking skills. An effective way to structure a lesson is the 5E Instructional Design Model (Bybee, 2015), which leads students through a five-stage learning process of engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate. This process can take place in a brick-and-mortar setting, a digital classroom or a hybrid environment.

KEYS 5E_2, CC-BY-NC Nancy Remler, 2024

Engage: This beginning phase easily follows the essential question because it is where the teacher launches a lesson by promoting student curiosity. The essential question is a good way to generate discussion, or it could be a good prompt for a focused free-write or online exploration. However, the teacher decides to engage students’ curiosity, assess prior knowledge, or identify misconceptions, the engage phase helps students to understand the topic of the lesson and why it is important.
Explore: This phase enables students to practice skills, examine concepts more closely, or investigate problems/questions. During this phase, students might work independently to build an understanding of concepts and skills, or they might work in pairs or small groups. As they collaborate, they might identify how their perspectives differ. During this phase, students might help each other master skills/concepts, or they might generate questions to help them move forward to the next phase. An important component of this stage is to ensure students have opportunities to explore before emphasis is placed on explaining key concepts.
Explain: Often formative assessment takes place during this phase as students explain the concepts they have formed or the solutions to problems they have attempted to solve. Students might explain their knowledge in spoken, written, drawn, or demonstrated ways, such as by creating a chart, building a model, or writing a paragraph. During this phase, the teacher can identify students’ misunderstandings and adjust instruction to help them reframe their thinking. Formative assessment can help the teacher determine whether students are ready for the next phase.
Elaborate: Continued practice and/or exploration takes place during this phase, which often involves students’ application of concepts to authentic situations. Often students proceed through this phase by completing homework assignments. Peer assessment or self-assessment might take place, and those activities elevate students’ thinking a little more.
Evaluate: This phase involves assessment as well, but usually in the form of a summative assessment. Often those assessments are quizzes or tests, but depending on the purpose and the subject matter, those assessments might be written assignments, presentations, dramatizations, projects, or research reports.

With the 5E model, students might start out working on lower-order thinking skills, especially if their engage stage connects them to their prior experiences or memories. However, as students progress through the explore stage and beyond, they form questions, identify their own errors, correct them, and apply their knowledge to actual contexts.

Using technology to explore real-world problems is also a great way to promote higher-order thinking. When referencing International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards during planning, consider how students can elevate learning by researching current trends or data, making models and digital representations, or working collaboratively on a project. Technology should enhance learning activities, not duplicate activities they can easily do with low-tech materials. Digital learning opportunities should encourage students to engage with each other, with tools for representations, or even with outside sources, as in the following examples:

In an elementary classroom, small groups of students may take a virtual field trip to a local wildlife habitat and gather data on the number of animals viewed during different times of the day.
In a middle school mathematics classroom, students can manipulate shapes to justify the formula for the Pythagorean theorem.
In a high school physics class, students might gather data in a virtual rocket simulation, adjusting variables of launch speed and angle to draw conclusions.
In a high school history class, students may collaborate on a podcast to discuss the Supreme Court Case Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka and its effects on their own community.

Teachers often articulate that time does not allow for higher-order thinking and group activities. The 5E design, though, can help teachers manage time for collaborative learning. The five-part model makes it easier to break time into segments that allow for information sharing followed by small group discussion and reflection. Hammond (2015) describes this process as “chunk” and “chew”. The human brain can only process small pieces of information at a time, so it is important to “chunk” lessons for the right amount of information based on the student’s age. When working memory is full from instruction through small mini lessons or presentations (“chunks”), the brain needs opportunities to process and reflect (“chew”) on that information. In a typical 40-minute lesson, Hammond says, “the brain takes in information for 12-20 minutes before it cycles down for 5-10 minutes” (p. 131). During the “cycle down” time, it is essential to provide students with active processing and reflection routines that may include graphic organizers, repetition, talking in small groups with accountable talk, and summarizing through similes, metaphors, and stories (Hammond, 2015, pp. 132-138). Beginning teachers might find it overwhelming to give students so much time to engage actively, but the chunk and chew strategies can simultaneously foster speaking and listening practice along with instruction for projects and independent work.

Please open the next tab: Other Ways to Elevate Student Thinking

The 5E model is just one way to foster students’ critical thinking. Other popular pedagogies help students elevate their thinking by working in groups, solving real-world problems, or utilizing technology to provide unique solutions to problems. Although other resources will provide more thorough information about those teaching approaches, the following table will give you a general idea of how they can engage students’ higher-order thinking skills.

Please open the next tab: Fostering a Variety of Thinking Levels

Although Standard 1 expects teachers to foster student thinking at high levels, teachers are not expected to have students thinking at high levels all the time. Often, thinking at lower levels can serve as a springboard for higher-order thinking. Teachers might begin a unit or a lesson with work at lower levels, such as recall, identification, and comprehension, so that students can use that basic knowledge to support them as they analyze, conduct research, justify opinions, or support their claims.

In Stating Clear, Meaningful Purposes or in a curriculum design course, you learned about Bloom’s Taxonomy, a rubric that organizes thinking skills into various levels. While it’s common to introduce new topics by having students think about them at lower levels, such as recalling facts, listing steps, stating theories, or defining terms, those lower-order activities should serve as initial stepping stones toward higher-order thinking about those concepts, thinking such as analysis, evaluation, and creation.

The following activities often revolve around lower-order thinking. If your instruction largely involves the following types of learning activities, then your students might not be reaching those higher levels:

Worksheets and drills (e.g., mathematics fact worksheets or spelling drills)
Copying terms and definitions to a word wall or notebook glossary
Flashcards for vocabulary, multiplication, or historical dates
Matching and sorting tasks
Fill-in-the-blank exercises
Multiple-choice or true/false questions
Labeling diagrams
Memorizing poems, historical speeches, works of music, or mathematical properties
Reciting those memorized poems, speeches, or mathematical properties

That doesn’t mean teachers should avoid such activities in class. It is possible to complete a worksheet or do a sorting task while also engaging higher order thinking. It all depends on what the teacher asks students to do. If the exercises, diagrams, worksheets, or problems expect students to provide one-word or quick answers, they’re likely thinking at lower levels. If that’s the case, then in other activities, they might think at higher levels by working in the following ways:

Analysis: This type of thinking involves the process of examining the parts of something to determine how they contribute to the whole. Students can analyze in various ways, often through comparing and contrasting, examining the steps of a process, examining causes and effects, or examining timelines or spatial relationships.
Investigation/Experimentation: This kind of thinking involves exploring existing information relevant to a question or problem. Students can conduct research on a topic, analyze data, and present their conclusion, which develops research, critical thinking, and synthesis skills. Sometimes this kind of thinking involves generating new information, such as through experimentation. Students often think of experiments as lab work in science classes, but experiments can take place in other subjects as well.
Socratic Discussions: This type of engagement requires the facilitation of discussions where students can ask and answer open-ended questions about topics. Students can use discussion to engage in thoughtful dialogue that deepens their understanding and critical analysis. They can also connect their understanding to real-world problems to demonstrate their application of knowledge.
Simulations and Role-Playing: This type of thinking requires students to explore concepts in a dynamic and interactive way. Students can take on the role of characters or retell a historical event. Role-playing can develop empathy, critical thinking, and the ability to apply knowledge in simulated real-world contexts.
Assessment: Often assessment involves estimating the value of a thing, behavior, or skill. But it does not have to include a value judgment. Assessment can involve the careful study of a phenomenon and decision-making based on that study.
Justification: This type of thinking involves making an assertion and supporting that assertion with evidence and/or reason. Acts of persuasion and debates fall into this category of thinking. Students can research, formulate arguments, and defend their positions. They can also use argumentation to consider and respond to multiple perspectives.
Creating: This type of thinking is the generation of something new like original works (e.g., stories, models, experiments) related to the curriculum. Students can create something tangible or something aesthetic. When students create, they often use creativity and innovative thinking to engage in other forms of higher-order thinking. Ultimately, the result is something new and original.

The table below illustrates learning activities that would generate higher-order thinking:

Please open the next tab: Getting Started

The content of this chapter examines important concepts that will affect all aspects of your work. But you are just getting started as a teacher, and for that reason, you might feel a little overwhelmed by how to foster higher-order thinking in your students. Remember that this chapter is designed to help you meet an InternKEYS standard, and you can do so by starting with smaller-scale adjustments to your planning and instruction. Try one or two of the following strategies, and add to them as you develop your teaching confidence:

Ask why and how questions in addition to the who, what, and when questions.
Include time for students to discuss essential questions and why they are important.
Offer opportunities for students to reflect on their work, share what they do not understand, and seek assistance from their classmates.
Give students opportunities to work together, examining each other’s work and discussing how they came up with the answers/results they did.

Your program supervisors, internship supervisors, and colleagues can also provide ideas for fostering students’ higher-order thinking. As you develop this expertise, you will notice how this aspect of your work emerges in planning, instruction, and assessment so that students can comprehend concepts and think about their own learning in complex ways. That thinking is what enables students to express themselves and their thinking through creativity, communication, and applications. Students can also use critical thinking and their knowledge to progress beyond the classroom.

Activity 1: Review the following learning activities and determine whether it supports higher-level or lower-level thinking.

1. First-grade students work in pairs and count to twenty orally.