IMPORTANCE OF HIGH ORDER THINKING SKILLS

            Higher order thinking skills is a concept that notes on the different types of learning and on the difference in the amount of cognitive processing. It is a way to help students think and not just memorize and also improve their cognitive ability. These skills come to us in the form of Bloom’s Taxonomy, which gives us a hierarchy of levels that create higher order thinking skills.

            The first level is remembering. It is basically the ability to remember previous learned material by recalling facts, terms, and basic answers. The second level is understanding, which is the understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing, interpreting information that a student has learned. The third level is application. This level is a way for the students to solve problems by applying their knowledge and techniques. The fourth level is analyzing, which lets the students break information into bits and pieces by identifying the cause or affect and finding evidences to support their claims. The fifth level is evaluating, which is where students make judgments on information and find the validity of the idea or work. The last level is creating, which the students can combine information that they have together to create a new pattern or new solutions. The last 3 levels, analyzing, evaluating, and creating is very beneficial to the students because it helps them with critical thinking, and problem solving. This allows the student to take their knowledge and apply it to other things beyond the classroom and apply it to their lives.

            These skills not only help a child learn but helps them use the knowledge beyond the classroom. Through these levels, the students will see why the information that they learn is useful and helpful in their lives. They can apply the information to solve a problem at home or at work and gain experience with their knowledge. Most students see schoolwork as pointless busy work. I honestly saw a lot of my schoolwork as pointless throughout my life. With Bloom’s taxonomy, students will not only know the purpose of the information they are learning but be more motivated to learn as well. If they know the importance of the information they learn and understand the usefulness of it, the students will most definitely be more motivated to learn.

            As a teacher, it is crucial to use bloom’s taxonomy to give learning a meaning to each student. I will make sure that the students know the importance and relevance in the things that I teach and will help the students apply what they learn beyond the classroom. As a science teacher, a lot of the lab work will require the scientific method. Scientific method uses all of the higher order thinking skills. You began the method by asking a question, then doing research, constructing a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis through an experiment, analyzing the results with the date obtained, drawing a conclusion, and making corrections and expanding from the hypothesis. By using the scientific method for every lab, not only will the students be able to think about what they might see and apply their knowledge to construct the experiment, but can analyze the results and create something new through the failures or success. I believe that one of the most important things to do is reflect. After each lab, the students will be required to discuss the lab with fellow students and answer follow-up questions that will help them create and evaluate such as “What changes would you make…?”” or “Can you assess the importance of…?”. Through reflecting and asking themselves such questions, the students will be able to see what they did right and wrong and think beyond what they have. They will be able to use the information they have to create something new and apply the lab beyond the classroom. 

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