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To go back to the introduction to
this series of professional development activities, click
here
How can we encourage higher-order thinking skills?
To help to answer this question here are two tasks for you to
do which we hope will help you to:
- distinguish between problems that encourage higher-order
thinking skills and problems which don't
- develop problems of your own that support higher-order thinking
skills
In this activity we shall focus on what we are looking for in
our pupils when they are engaged in using higher-order thinking
skills (HOTS).
You will need the following resources:
- Set of cards for matching: HOTS1.doc
- Document of strategies for modifying tasks: HOTS2.doc
The
first task
- Look at these notes on higher-order thinking skills and compare
them with your ideas. Are there any major differences? What is your
response to those differences?
The
second task
- Instead of replacing a lower-order problem with a different
problem, we can often modify it. How can we adapt lower-order maths
problems so they promote HOTS? HOTS2.doc outlines four key
strategies that will help to increase the challenge of standard
questions in the classroom:
-
- Here's the answer, what could the question be?
- Make up your own ...
- What if ...?
- All answers
- Look at a problem you have recently set one of your classes and
discuss how it could be transformed into one requiring higher-order
thinking skills. Jot down your ideas and keep them for
Activity 2.2 .
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