Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Higher-Order
Thinking These three strategies can help you ensure that
every lesson encourages students to think deeply.
Susan M. Brookhart
M
emorizing facts is boring. Drill-and- Strategy One: Open Questions
practice is boring. But thinking, for most I recommend that you plan two or three open questions for
students most of the time, is actually every lesson. Craft those questions carefully to make sure
fun. The good news is that lessons that they tap the particular content and thinking skills you want
support higher-order thinking are also to teach. And to deepen the learning even further, be sure
likely to interest and engage students. to include in your lesson plan some follow-up strategies
In this article, I share three of the many strategies to get students to respond to one another instead of just
available for infusing higher-order thinking skills into your toyou.
lesson plans. Try one or more of these, and experience the
magic of students thinking together. With support and scaf- Designing Open Questions
folding (students who are used to memorization and drill Ask students to describe similarities and differences. Be
may need to be convinced you really want them to think), careful; asking for similarities and differences can be a
both learning and motivation should improve. And that simple comprehension strategy (for example, Compare
may inspire you to find other ways to infuse higher-order and contrast the physical characteristics of mammals and
thinking into your classroom lessons. reptiles). Instead, you need to go for comparisons that
SUSIE FITZHUGH
subject of a retelling task, but instead
have students ask (and answer!) some-
thing meaningful about that content.
In the process, of course, students will might be an interesting problem to (For example, if the planet is very cold,
have to comprehend the content, but solve, one where students would have you might need some equipment that
would provide heat.)
theyll also have to wrap their heads to know something about ___? For
around it in a more active way. example, suppose your students are To accomplish this task, students
Pose a purposeful problem. Asking learning about the planets. Instead of will have to look up planet character-
students to make a poster is the having them choose a planet and make istics, understand what they mean, and
poster child for a retelling taskone a poster showing its characteristics, prioritize them in terms of challenges
that you find in many classrooms and give them this task: they would be interested in facing.
all over the Internet. All students have You are one of a new generation of That means they must learn about
to do is copy information onto their astronauts. You have been asked to help the planet (your original learning
poster, make it colorful and attractive, decide what planet youd like to settle intention) and also think analytically
and voil, they have a completed and why. Look at the characteristics of and critically about the information.
assignment, with no evidence of what each of the eight planets in the solar Ask what if and what else to
system, and decide which one youd
they understand about their topic. want to try to settle. Make a poster compel students to expand or elab-
Whenever you are tempted to assign describing your planet, the challenges orate on what theyre studying, ana-
a retelling task, start by posing a pur- it would present, and some of the lyzing, or describing. For example, in
poseful problem. Ask yourself, What equipment you might need to settle it. social studies, if students are studying
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As students offer their
thoughts about the open
question youve asked,
resist the temptation
to comment yourself.
Strategy 3: Student
Self-Assessment
Students who can self-assess are
poised to be life-long learners. They
are poised to use self-regulation strat-
egies and to be their own best coaches
as they learn. They are able to ask
focused questions when they dont
understand or when theyre stuck.
Here are three strategies for building
student self-assessment into lessons to
STEFANIE FELIX
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