Higher-Order Thinking Tasks

What level of Bloom's Taxonomy is being utilized when students are asked to demonstrate comprehension through one or more forms of explanation (e.g., classify a mental illness, compare ritual practices in two different religions)?

• Remembering

• Understanding

• Applying

• Analyzing

• Evaluating

What level of Bloom's Taxonomy is being utilized when students are asked to use information or a skill in a new situation (e.g., use Newton's second law to solve a problem for which it is appropriate, carry out a multivariate statistical analysis using a data set not previously encountered)?

• Remembering

• Understanding

• Applying

• Analyzing

• Evaluating

What level of Bloom's Taxonomy is being utilized when students are asked to retrieve, recall, or recognize relevant knowledge from long-term memory (e.g., recall dates of important events in U.S. history, remember the components of a bacterial cell)?

• Remembering

• Understanding

• Applying

• Analyzing

• Evaluating

What level of Bloom's Taxonomy is being utilized when students are asked to make judgments based on criteria and standards (e.g., detect inconsistencies or fallacies within a process or product, determine whether a scientist's conclusions follow from observed data, judge which of two methods is the way to solve a given problem, determine the quality of a product based on disciplinary criteria)?

• Remembering

• Understanding

• Applying

• Analyzing

• Evaluating

What level of Bloom's Taxonomy is being utilized when students are asked to break material into its constituent parts and determine how the parts relate to one another and/or to an overall structure or purpose (e.g., analyze the relationship between different flora and fauna in an ecological setting; analyze the relationship between different characters in a play; analyze the relationship between different institutions in a society)?

• Remembering

• Understanding

• Applying

• Analyzing

• Evaluating

According to Bloom's taxonomy, which of the following tasks is an example of "create"? Select ALL answers that are correct.

• reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure

• making dioramas and other models that illustrate vocabulary terms in 3 dimensions

• creation of posters that organize and reword information presented by the teacher

• putting elements together to form a new coherent or functional whole

Which level(s) of Webb's Depth of Knowledge constitute higher-order thinking? Select ALL that are correct.

• Level 1

• Level 2

• Level 3

• Level 4

Which of the following tasks is at a depth of 3 on Webb's Depth of Knowledge?

• Tasks that require recall of facts or rote application of simple procedures, but do not require any cognitive effort beyond remembering the right response or formula (examples include copying, computing, defining, and recognizing).

• Tasks with multiple valid responses where students must justify their choices (examples include solving non-routine problems, designing an experiment, or analyzing characteristics of a genre).

• Tasks that ask students synthesize information from multiple sources, often over an extended period of time, or transfer knowledge from one domain to solve problems in another (examples include designing a survey and interpreting the results, analyzing multiple texts by to extract themes, or writing an original myth in an ancient style).

• Tasks with more than one mental step and some basic decision-making (examples include comparing, organizing, summarizing, predicting, and estimating).

Which of the following tasks is at a depth of 2 on Webb's Depth of Knowledge?

• Tasks that require recall of facts or rote application of simple procedures, but do not require any cognitive effort beyond remembering the right response or formula (examples include copying, computing, defining, and recognizing).

• Tasks with multiple valid responses where students must justify their choices (examples include solving non-routine problems, designing an experiment, or analyzing characteristics of a genre).

• Tasks that ask students synthesize information from multiple sources, often over an extended period of time, or transfer knowledge from one domain to solve problems in another (examples include designing a survey and interpreting the results, analyzing multiple texts by to extract themes, or writing an original myth in an ancient style).

• Tasks with more than one mental step and some basic decision-making (examples include comparing, organizing, summarizing, predicting, and estimating).

Which of the following statements BEST articulates the use of Higher-Order Thinking (HOT) tasks in the classroom?

• Learning tasks should always have more than one step, because multi-step tasks result in higher-order thinking.

• Higher-order thinking tasks should be MORE DIFFICULT for students to complete rather than being MORE COMPLEX in nature.

• More difficult questions posed by the teacher lead to higher-order thinking by students.

• Classrooms that incorporate a combination of lower AND higher-order thinking tasks help prepare students for the diverse challenges they face in and out of school.

• All tasks that we ask students to complete should be higher-order thinking tasks rather than lower-level thinking tasks.