In this book, we try to provide a practical, down-to-earth guide for those who are involved in language learning and teaching. We hope that this book will be a useful reading for those who would like to incorporate higher-order thinking skills (HOTS)-enhancing techniques in their teaching practice. We set out from the position that, although it is hardly doubtful that it is at the heart of education, critical thinking is in reality often not given its due attention in pedagogy, particularly in language education. This book offers readers some practical advice on how to implement HOTS in their own practice. It has been written to take the reader through each technique with the ultimate goal of promoting HOTS step-by-step. In the introductory chapter, we present an overview of the theory behind HOTS, its definition, its relation to Bloom’s Taxonomy, its two dimensions (critical thinking and reflective thinking), and the ideas of some influential thinkers in this area. The subsequent chapters present six HOTS-enhancing techniques that classroom teachers can draw from, namely graphic organizers, critical discourse analysis, argumentation, emotion regulation and emotional intelligence enhancing techniques, reflective journals, and mindfulness-based strategies. As the book draws on a wide-ranging review of literature with exercises for direct use with language learners, we hope that this provides both theoretical and practical support for the teaching process to help language learners become effective critical thinkers. The compilation of the ideas in this book took us a long time, over a decade. Something that takes such a long time requires much engagement and life experience; so did this book.

Uses practical and research-based approaches to improve students' higher-order thinking skills and includes strategies for differentiating higher-order thinking skills and developing them in English language learners.

Too many teaching and learning activities require students to use only lower-order thinking (LOT), and many of the attempts educators make to promote higher-order thinking (HOT) are misconstrued. Higher-order thinking makes teaching and learning more engaging and intentional, adds intellectual rigor to any curriculum, and aids in the development of some important life skills among young learners Even preschoolers are capable of a great deal of higher-order thinking. Infusing a play-based curriculum with activities and interactions that promote higher-order thinking creates the type of play that fosters cognitive, language, physical, and social development. It is important to start developing students’ higher-order thinking skills when they are young, and this book provides numerous strategies for doing so. Most of the activities are in the form of open-ended interactive games that can be easily modified to be responsive to variety of cultures and to meet a range of learning abilities, styles, and intelligences.

Covers how to develop and use test questions and other assessments that reveal how well students can analyze, reason, solve problems, and think creatively.

This volume examines the assessment of higher order thinking skills from the perspectives of applied cognitive psychology and measurement theory. The volume considers a variety of higher order thinking skills, including problem solving, critical thinking, argumentation, decision making, creativity, metacognition, and self-regulation. Fourteen chapters by experts in learning and measurement comprise four sections which address conceptual approaches to understanding higher order thinking skills, cognitively oriented assessment models, thinking in the content domains, and practical assessment issues. The volume discusses models of thinking skills, as well as applied issues related to the construction, validation, administration and scoring of perfomancebased, selected-response, and constructed-response assessments. The goal of the volume is to promote a better theoretical understanding of higher order thinking in order to facilitate instruction and assessment of those skills among students in all K-12 content domains, as well as professional licensure and cetification settings.

Promoting Rigor Through Higher Level Questioning equips teachers with effective questioning strategies and:

A professional strategies notebook developed for grades 6-12 provides teachers with strategies to build every student's mastery of high-level thinking skills and includes model lessons featuring questioning, decision-making, creative thinking, problem solving, and idea generating.