A Study Guide for How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom

Most of the questions contained in this study guide are ones you can think about on your own, but you might consider pairing with a colleague or forming a study group with others who have read (or are reading) How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom.

Introduction

1. Reflect on why you are reading this book. What interests you about higher-order thinking skills? What do you hope to learn from reading this book?
2. How, currently, do your students use higher-order thinking skills in your classroom? How do you currently encourage, support, and assess thinking skills? Do you provide opportunities for higher-order thinking for all learners?

Chapter 1: General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking

1. What are the sources of your learning goals? Where do you get these, and how do you use them when you plan instruction and assessment? How does level of thinking figure into these learning goals?
2. Before you read this book, did you think of higher-order thinking and level of difficulty as two different things? If so, how has this book given you insights into these two aspects of assessment? How does treating these two as separate allow you to approach higher-order thinking for your lower-achieving students? For your higher-achieving students?
3. The use of novel material on assessments is sometimes an issue for teachers who want to "go over everything" with their students before an assessment. How do you deal with this issue in your classroom?
4. Have you ever used a test blueprint to plan the balance of content and thinking covered on a test? Have you ever used a "blueprint" more broadly to plan the balance of content and thinking in a unit? If so, what advantages did you gain from this practice? If not, how might you begin to do this?
5. How do you use rubrics in your classroom? How do you handle higher-order thinking in those rubrics? What changes, if any, might you make in your rubrics to better assess higher-order thinking?

Chapter 2: Assessing Analysis, Evaluation, and Creation

1. Do you currently use a taxonomy of thinking skills (e.g., Bloom, SOLO, Webb) in your teaching? If so, how do you use it in assessment?
2. Describe assessments you have used or will use, for the subject and grade level you teach, in which students have to
   1. Focus on a question, or infer a main idea or main point that is not directly stated in a text or another source of information.
   2. Analyze an argument.
   3. Compare and contrast two ideas (or concepts, characters, or events).
   4. Evaluate the worth of an idea (or a painting, a piece of literature, an experiment, or a piece of legislation).
   
   How has this chapter helped you think about these assessments?
3. What kind of "practice" (instructional activities and/or formative assessments) do students have with analysis, evaluation, and creation in your class before they are required to demonstrate these skills on a summative assessment? How do you coordinate the two?

Chapter 3: Assessing Logic and Reasoning

1. What kinds of reasoning are used most often in the subject(s) you teach? How do you model them for students? How do you ordinarily assess them?
2. Describe assessments you have used or will use, for the subject and grade level you teach, in which students have to
   1. Make or evaluate deductive conclusions.
   2. Make or evaluate inductive conclusions.
   3. Reason by analogy.
   
   How has this chapter helped you think about these assessments?
3. How do you give feedback on the soundness of students' conclusions and the appropriateness of their evidence? Do your current assessments include these logic and reasoning skills as criteria? What changes, if any, might you make to ensure that logic and reasoning are assessed?

Chapter 4: Assessing Judgment

1. Describe the kinds of judgment used most often in the subject(s) you teach. How do you model them for students? How do you ordinarily assess them?
2. What sources of information do your students use (e.g., textbooks, websites, parents and other adults, library books, periodicals, encyclopedias)? What kinds of information do they get from these sources, and how do they evaluate their credibility? How do you ordinarily assess that? How has this chapter affected your thinking about assessing students' evaluations of the credibility of their sources of information?
3. How do you teach and assess the concept of an "assumption" in your subject area and grade level? What opportunities for identifying assumptions do students have in your class, and how do you assess their capabilities at identifying assumptions? How has this chapter affected your thinking in this regard?
4. What rhetorical and persuasive strategies are used most often in materials for your subject area and grade level? How do you assess students' ability to identify these and respond appropriately to them? How has this chapter affected your thinking in this regard?

Chapter 5: Assessing Problem Solving

1. What constitutes a "problem" in the subject area(s) you teach?
2. What kinds of problems do you usually use for assessing students? How structured (or unstructured) are they?
3. Do your assessments ever require students to identify a problem before solving it? Describe your students' current skills in problem identification. What sorts of instruction and assessments can you use to help them develop this skill?
4. Do your assessments ever require students to identify irrelevancies before solving a problem or to identify the need for additional information? Describe your students' current skills in identifying irrelevancies and identifying the need for additional information. What sorts of instruction and assessments can you use to help them develop these skills?
5. Do your assessments ever require students to describe multiple ways to solve a problem? Describe your students' current skills in seeing multiple ways to solve problems. What sorts of instruction and assessments can you use to help them develop these skills?
6. Do your assessments ever require students to explain their reasoning for solving a problem? Describe your students' current skills in explaining their reasoning. What sorts of instruction and assessments can you use to help them develop these skills?

Chapter 6: Assessing Creativity and Creative Thinking

1. Do you believe creativity involves only generating something new (or putting things together in a new way), or do you believe creativity also involves evaluating the worth of the newly created thing? How does this belief inform your assessment practice?
2. How often are you able to juxtapose two different content areas, texts, or ideas in your assessments? How do students respond to tasks that require their use of these "unlike things"? What do you learn from their work on these tasks?
3. What kind of student choice do you build into your assessments? Are the elements of student choice in your assessments related to the intended learning outcomes—the substance of the assignment—or are they more related to tangential issues like format or organization? How has this chapter helped you think about this issue?
4. When creativity is part of one of your assessments, what are your criteria for evaluating it? What kinds of feedback do you give to students about their creative choices? How do your scoring rubrics reflect your criteria for student creativity?

Extending Your Learning

If you have found this book to be helpful and wish to continue to develop your own skills in assessing higher-order thinking, you may want to work with a colleague or study group to use various assessments in your classroom and reflect on the results. Colleagues or study groups can consider cases of assessments and student work that teachers bring to the group for discussion. To analyze assessments you have tried in your classroom, at least the following should be presented for each case:

• Statement of the learning objective (goal, target) you intended to assess
• Description of instructional strategies used
• Description of the assessment, including whether it was formative or summative and how it exemplified the learning objective(s)
• Example of a successful student's work, with teacher feedback (one or more)
• Example of an unsuccessful student's work, with teacher feedback (one or more)
• Teacher self-assessment of what he or she and the students learned
• Evidence of students' learning

The colleague or group, after hearing the teacher's presentation and reviewing the case materials, should answer these questions:

• What was particularly informative about this case study, and why?
• How, if at all, did the assessment give information about the students' higher-order thinking?
• How could the students and teacher use this information? Did the assessment serve the purpose(s) the teacher intended? Did the assessment serve any other purposes or have any other consequences?
• How did students seem to respond to this assessment? Did they express interest, or fear, or curiosity, for example? Did they seem motivated to do their best? How might you interpret these responses?

How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom was written by Susan M. Brookhart. This 160-page, 7" x 9" book (Stock #109111; ISBN-13: 978-1-4166-1048-9) is available from ASCD for $18.95 (ASCD member) or $24.95 (nonmember). Copyright © 2010 by ASCD. To order a copy, call ASCD at 1-800-933-2723 (in Virginia 1-703-578-9600) and press 2 for the Service Center. Or buy the book from ASCD's Online Store.