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CHAPTER 2

Applying a Taxonomy to the Thinking in Your Classroom

Children are not vessels to be filled, but lamps to be lit.

—Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati

There are many taxonomies for classifying levels of thinking; however, Benjamin S. Bloom’s (1956) seminal work, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, establishes a taxonomy or classification system. In A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, editors Lorin W. Anderson and David R. Krathwohl (2001) suggest revisions that redefine the levels as Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. These revised levels are the focus of this chapter—a lens through which you can view the strategies in this book, and the filter through which the strategies are organized.

The first three levels—Remember, Understand, and Apply—often require convergent thinking with similar student answers to assignments. However, the Analyze, Evaluate, and Create levels typify the sort of divergent thinking that supports a variety of correct solutions or products. Needless to say, the strategies in this book focus much more heavily on aspects of critical thinking that focus on divergent solutions to challenging problems, although we do start at Understand-level strategies as a base for building these skills. Sousa (2011) sums up the thinking at each of these levels as follows.

• The Remember and Understand levels involve students acquiring and understanding information.

• The Apply and Analyze levels describe students transforming information through deduction and inference. (The Analyze-level strategies in chapter 5, page 39, all implicitly involve Apply-level thinking as part of the process.)

• The Evaluate and Create levels describe students generating new information.

The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy identifies cognitive processes under each level to clarify the level of thinking (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). It includes nineteen cognitive processes classified among the six levels (table 2.1, page 12).

To understand how to properly implement strategies for cognitive engagement at various critical-thinking levels, educators need to grasp the foundational knowledge of the depth of thinking required at each Bloom’s level. I find that, without a rooted understanding of the level of thinking complexity, educators tend to misidentify Bloom’s levels, often inaccurately believing their instruction is engaging students in higher levels of thinking.

Table 2.1: Bloom’s Taxonomy Revised

Thinking Level	Cognitive Processes
Remember	• Recognizing	• Recalling
Understand	• Interpreting	• Inferring
	• Exemplifying	• Comparing
	• Classifying	• Explaining
	• Summarizing
Apply	• Executing	• Implementing
Analyze	• Differentiating	• Attributing
	• Organizing
Evaluate	• Checking	• Critiquing
Create	• Generating	• Producing
	• Planning

Source: Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001.

To better interpret these Bloom’s levels and cognitive processes, I describe each of them in the following sections, along with examples of student-focused tasks that align to each level’s cognitive processes.

Thinking at the Remember Level

At the Remember level, learners must recover information they previously memorized. Although this is a low-level thinking process, memorizing information is important for higher-level thinking. For example, knowing the types of rocks can help students analyze problems with rock formations, a higher-level thinking skill.

There are two cognitive processes within the Remember level: (1) recognizing and (2) recalling.

Recognizing

Recognizing involves students selecting the correct memorized answer from a series of answer choices, like in a multiple-choice test. The following are examples of activities that use the recognizing cognitive process.

• Have students create a set of word cards and definitions based on textbook information using Quizlet (https://quizlet.com).

• Provide students with a list of terms and a list of definitions, and ask students to match them.

• Provide students with a series of shapes, and ask them to circle the shapes that are quadrilaterals, _{for example.}

Recalling

Recalling requires students to provide a correct memorized answer from their memory, like for a fill-in-the-blank question. The following are examples of interactions that use the recalling sublevel.

• Ask students, “What feature is found at the top of a graph to tell the reader what topic is being displayed?”

• Say to students, “Through a process, plants use carbon dioxide to create oxygen and food. What is this process called?”

• Ask students, “What is the main function of each branch of the U.S. government?”

Thinking at the Understand Level

Where Remember-level thinking is critical for establishing foundational concepts, information that is not processed (or understood) at deeper levels is easy to forget. At the Understand level, students begin establishing new connections with the content.

There are seven cognitive processes associated with the Understand level: (1) interpreting, (2) exemplifying, (3) classifying, (4) summarizing, (5) inferring, (6) comparing, and (7) explaining.

Interpreting

When interpreting, students convert information from one form to another; this might mean changing text into paraphrases, pictures, graphics, or music. The following are examples of activities that use the interpreting cognitive process.

• Instruct students to use a novel’s cover to explain what they think the book is about. (Convert pictures to text.)

• Instruct students to use a music-making program like GarageBand (www.apple.com/mac/garageband) to create a song describing one of the key terms for the unit. (Convert text to music.)

• Instruct students to examine a peer’s or previous student’s work on a mathematical problem and orally explain how that student solved it. (Convert graphics to paraphrased speech.)

• Have students listen to the story of a raindrop and its journey, and then instruct them to create a diagram to show the route the raindrop travels through the water cycle. (Convert text to pictures.)

• Instruct students to paraphrase a partner’s answer after a Think-Pair-Share activity. (Convert speech to paraphrased speech.)

Exemplifying

With exemplifying, students must understand an existing concept and then find and suggest another example of that concept. These examples may include connections to other content areas or prior experiences. The following are examples of activities that use the exemplifying cognitive process.

• After having students learn about different types of graphs, instruct them to scan a report and locate similar examples of different types of graphs.

• After having students study the states of matter, instruct them to identify various chemical changes, such as making ice cubes, burning firewood, melting a snowman, or putting gelatin in a refrigerator.

• After providing students with several examples of similes from a text, instruct them to create their own original example of a simile.

• After having students learn about fact versus opinion, instruct them to locate an example of an author’s opinion in a text.

Classifying

When classifying, students categorize information or items based on similar characteristics. For example, students group information under headings based on their common attributes. The following are examples of activities that use the classifying cognitive process.

• Instruct students to group mathematics equations into categories based on the basic number properties (such as associative property, distributive property, and so on).

• Instruct students to sort real-world pictures—such as a stop sign, a wheel, and so on—based on the subject’s number of sides and angles.

• After explaining the difference between living and nonliving things, instruct students to read a story and sort objects in the story based on whether they are living or nonliving.

• Instruct students to sort new vocabulary into categories based on connotation.

Summarizing

When summarizing, students simplify information in a succinct statement. The summary could be about reading, watching a video clip, or observing a natural event. The following are examples of activities that use the summarizing cognitive process.

• Direct students to use sticky notes in the margin of a text to write down one sentence that summarizes each paragraph.

• After listening to a story, instruct students to write down three important plot points.

• After examining a word problem and modeling a valid answer to it, instruct students to describe the steps necessary to solve the problem.

• Have students identify the key points in a science video on force and motion.

Inferring

Inferring involves using evidence and reasons to make a conclusion. Inferences drawn with limited evidence can be inaccurate so it’s important for teachers to model for students how to recognize and use valid and reliable evidence to support their conclusion. The following are examples of activities that use the inferring cognitive process.

• Instruct students to determine the next three numbers in a pattern. For example, “List the next three numbers in a pattern that begins: 345, 355, 365.”

• Based on their use of microscope slides of different matter, instruct students to determine if an object is a solid or a liquid.

• Instruct students to use context clues to determine an author’s opinion when it is not explicitly stated in the text.

• Instruct students to predict what will happen next in a text, based on clues from the reading.

• After having students watch a pot of boiling water for ten minutes, instruct them to describe what happens to the water level and what reasoning might explain the change.

Comparing

Comparing involves examining two different ideas or items to assess their similarities and differences. For example, students can use metaphors or analogies to make their comparisons. The following are examples of activities that use the comparing cognitive process.

• Instruct students to compare two solutions that slow or prevent wind from changing the shape of the land by providing two similarities and three differences between the solutions.

• Instruct students to examine the data on two graphs and determine how they are similar and different in terms of mean, median, and mode.

• Instruct students to identify similarities between two paragraphs with a similar theme.

• Instruct students to describe two similarities and two differences between two ecosystems.

Explaining

Explaining involves understanding cause-and-effect relationships. The following are examples of activities that use the explaining cognitive process.

• Instruct students to consider a mathematics problem that highlights the order of operations. Ask them to explain how changing the order changes the solution.

• Instruct students to assess a flowering plant from the school grounds that has wilted leaves and explain what might have caused the wilting.

• After having students read about the Boston Tea Party, instruct them to explain how they think England might react.

• Instruct students to explain how using dashes instead of commas might impact the readability of a text.

Thinking at the Apply Level

At the third level of Bloom’s taxonomy revised (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), the Apply level involves executing certain procedures or steps to address a new problem. This usually involves teaching procedures to accomplish a task, such as teaching the steps to analyze a political cartoon, a procedure for analyzing a five-paragraph essay, or a method for finding the area of a triangle.

There are two cognitive processes in the Apply level: (1) executing and (2) implementing.

Executing

In executing, students must grapple with a new problem and identify a procedure to solve the problem. This might include solving for a variable in an algebraic equation, editing a paper for punctuation, and so on. At this lower-cognitive process within the Apply level, students should very quickly be able to identify a procedure and apply it to the new problem when there is one correct answer. The following are examples of activities that use the executing cognitive process.

• After demonstrating a method for adding three-digit numbers, instruct students to add two such numbers together; for example, 654 + 162.

• After presenting different objects in the room, instruct students to draw models of the waves that dropping the objects into the water would produce.

• After modeling an example, instruct students to write an original sentence demonstrating the same structure of the model sentence.

• After teaching the rules for semicolon usage, instruct students to add semicolons to a paragraph.

• After modeling the steps involved in free-throw shooting, instruct students to practice shooting free throws.

Implementing

Implementing tasks often involve more variables than executing tasks, and are therefore more challenging. This is because the procedure students must select to complete the task isn’t immediately clear, and sometimes the problems might have more than one answer. The following are examples of activities that use the implementing cognitive process.

• Instruct students to answer the following problem: John had forty-five apples. While driving home, twelve rolled out of his truck. He stopped, and his neighbor doubled the apples he had. How many apples does John have now?

• Instruct students to create a grocery list of items they need to make spaghetti for their family. Students should use local grocery advertisements to help them stay within a given budget.

• Instruct students to use a six-step prewriting process to plan a letter to their principal about their thoughts on changes to the student cell phone policy.

• Instruct students to use the SOAPSTone (speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, tone) process to identify each element in a two-paragraph newspaper editorial.

Thinking at the Analyze Level

At the Analyze level, learners use knowledge and understanding to complete higher-level tasks. If a student can search the internet for the correct answer or provide the teacher with an answer within a few minutes, the task is not at this level. This level is also the ground floor for the even higher-level thinking that goes on at the Evaluate and Create levels. “A key component of critical thinking is the process of analyzing and assessing thinking with a view to improving it. Hence, many consider the Analyze level as the beginning of deep-thinking processes” (Stobaugh, 2013, p. 28).

At the Analyze level, there are three cognitive processes: (1) differentiating, (2) organizing, and (3) attributing.

Differentiating

With this cognitive process, students must determine relevant and irrelevant source information. Differentiating is more complex than the Understand-level cognitive process of comparing since students must determine which information contributes to an overall structure. The following are examples of activities that use the differentiating cognitive process.

• Instruct students to determine which facts from a source you provide do not match characteristics of a given landform.

• Instruct students to highlight information from a relevant source that is not needed to solve a real-world problem.

• Instruct students to identify evidence in a related text supporting the claim that global warming is occurring.

• Instruct students to identify quotes from a story-based text that establish and support the theme.

Organizing

When organizing, students examine interactions and sequences of events to identify connections among relevant information. They must then design a new arrangement or structure for the information that depicts these relationships. To demonstrate their knowledge, students might construct charts, diagrams, outlines, flowcharts, or other graphic organizers to depict the interrelationships among the information. The following are examples of activities that use the organizing cognitive process.

• Instruct students to select a graph format that most appropriately organizes given data.

• After having students examine five real-world mathematical prompts, have them sort the prompts into two groups and explain how they are similar.

• Instruct students to categorize the twenty vocabulary words in three to five groups and explain what the words in each group have in common.

• Instruct students to create a graphic organizer or another visual depicting the claims and counterclaims for an argument.

Attributing

The cognitive process of attributing involves students identifying biases, assumptions, or points of view in information. Assessing the credibility of sources helps students analyze that information. The following are examples of activities that use the attributing cognitive process.

• Instruct students to read a primary source on a word-processing program and add a comment to the text when they see it express biases, assumptions, or points of view.

• Instruct students to examine the data related to students’ perspectives on school lunches, and have them use the information available to determine what concerns this information reveals and if those perspectives are rooted in real or perceived issues.

• After reading the novel The Awakening (Chopin, 1993), instruct students to determine the author’s perspective of gender roles. Students explain the perspective using at least five quotes from the text.

• Instruct students to determine the author’s point of view in an article about gun violence. Students should cite textual evidence to support their conclusion.

• After reviewing the beginning steps of a peer’s science experiment, instruct students to identify any biases or assumptions its creator made in his or her hypothesis.

Thinking at the Evaluate Level

To prepare students to survive and succeed in the modern world, evaluating information is a vital skill. As educator and leadership expert Douglas Reeves (2015) states, “Reluctance to criticize and evaluate is the ally of mediocrity” (p. 25).

At the Evaluate level, students examine information sources to assess quality and then make decisions based on specific criteria. When students engage in Evaluate-level tasks, they typically also deploy lower-level skills, particularly at the Analyze level. This makes evaluating a highly engaging cognitive process.

There are two cognitive processes at the Evaluate level: (1) checking and (2) critiquing.

Checking

Checking encompasses examining for fallacies or inconsistencies (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). In Assessing Critical Thinking in Middle and High Schools, I write, “Students possessing this cognitive ability pursue unsubstantiated claims, question ideas, and demand validation for arguments, interpretations, assumptions, beliefs, or theories” (Stobaugh, 2013, p. 33). To check a source, students might examine the author’s qualifications, determine if it provides sufficient and valid evidence for its perspective, or assess if it uses reliable sources. The following are examples of activities that use the checking cognitive process.

• Instruct students to watch a peer group’s ShowMe (www.showme.com) screencast recording that details the group’s problem-solving steps as it attempts to solve a multistep, real-world mathematics problem. Students check their work and identify any errors.

• Instruct students to examine the inferences of a peer’s analysis of an earthquake magnitude per region chart. Students determine if each inference is accurate based on the data and explain why.

• Instruct students to examine a peer’s essay that provides evidence his or her fictional animal can survive in a particular habitat. Students determine whether the peer used sufficient and valid substantiation to support the survival of his or her new creation.

• Instruct students to read a political speech, and determine if its arguments are logical or fallacies.

• Instruct students to read “A Modest Proposal” by essayist Jonathan Swift (1996) and identify logical arguments and fallacies he makes in the text.

Critiquing

Critiquing involves using set criteria to evaluate various options. When critiquing, students identify reasons each option meets or does not meet the criteria, ultimately identifying the best choice. The following are examples of activities that use the critiquing cognitive process.

• Instruct students to use their knowledge about money and counting money to determine if Alexander, in Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday (Viorst, 1987), is making the best decisions. Students describe three choices Alexander makes during the story and use their mathematics skills to explain if those are good choices.

• Instruct students to work as a group to determine three traits important to high-quality paper towels. Groups test four brands of paper towels and note how each performs on each trait. Each group plans a short presentation sharing the brand it believes is the best based on its findings.

• Instruct students to examine a rubric for evaluating a persuasive letter they submit. In the self-evaluation column on the rubric, the students note their score for each rubric criterion. They highlight challenging key words in the rubric and state the reasons for their score.

• Instruct students to evaluate who would be the best author to bring to the school after a special presentation for examining the school budget. Students identify the kind of qualities the school should consider when deciding whom to select. After researching the authors, students also rate each on the identified qualities and prepare a digital presentation to persuasively convince the school’s library media specialist that their author is the best choice.

• Instruct students to create a rubric to evaluate which new student-created plan for the school’s website is the best. Students evaluate three such plans and record strengths and areas of improvement for each rubric indicator.

Thinking at the Create Level

The highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy revised is the Create level and, not surprisingly, it is both the most nebulous and most complex (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Sir Ken Robinson asserts that creativity is “a process of having original ideas that have value” (as cited in Azzam, 2009, p. 22). Developmental and cognitive psychologist Wendy L. Ostroff (2016) comments, “Creativity is imagination in action” (p. 76).

For our purposes, creativity involves having students organize information in a new way to design a product. At this level, students utilize the thinking processes of the Understand, Analyze, and Evaluate levels to design a new product that demonstrates understanding of content. On the importance of creativity to learning, best-selling author Robert Greene (2012) writes:

First, it is through all of their hard work, the depth of their knowledge, and the development of their analytical skills that they reach this higher form of intelligence. Second, when they experience this intuition or insight, they invariably subject it to a high degree of reflection and reasoning. (p. 259)

The challenge for teachers is ensuring that the creative tasks they assign meet the necessary criteria. When students produce a poster or website, it does not necessarily mean the task is on the Create level. To be on the Create level, the task must ensure that students are engaged in brainstorming new ideas, identifying the best idea, planning a solution, and then designing a solution different from others.

Because Create-level content has multiple, demanding criteria, it’s important that we explore this level of Bloom’s taxonomy revised (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) a little deeper. Educational consultant Patti Drapeau (2014) establishes the following six criteria for students who think creatively:

• Express ideas other students don’t think of.

• Like to choose their own way of demonstrating understanding.

• Ask questions that may seem off-task or silly.

• Enjoy open-ended assignments.

• Prefer to discuss ideas rather than facts.

• Prefer to try new ways of approaching a problem rather than accepted ways. (p. 6)

In schools, teachers can post problems or challenges with multiple solutions to inspire creative thinking. The structure of Create-level tasks might be different from a typical essay or multiple-choice assessment. In fact, it might be more performance oriented. As a performance assessment, teachers might establish work and assessment criteria that require students to exhibit knowledge and skills through some form of product, presentation, or demonstration showing they can transfer knowledge and skills into real-world contexts. Often such assessments have interdisciplinary connections (Hofman, Goodwin, & Kahl, 2015). There are many positive effects of Create-level performance assessments, including engaging in critical and creative thinking, personalizing learning with more meaningful tasks, engaging students in real-world tasks, and extending learning opportunities outside the classroom through collaboration (Hofman et al., 2015).

Reeves (2015) states there are four elements for supporting creative thought in schools: “(1) mistake-tolerant culture, (2) rigorous decision-making system, (3) culture that nurtures creativity, and (4) leadership team that models and supports creativity” (p. 7). He asserts that creativity involves multiple first drafts to achieve a quality product. Reeves (2015) also identifies eight dimensions associated with creative thought.

1. Research basis: Students use research to support creative ideas.

2. Multidisciplinary perspective: Creative ideas consider different perspectives from multiple content areas.

3. Source material: Ideas build on previous thoughts.

4. Clarity of guidelines: Students receive consistent feedback through rubrics.

5. Products: Students create a product (blog, speech, and so on).

6. Process: There is documentation showing the evolution of students’ thinking throughout the project.

7. Collaboration: The project involves some collaboration.

8. Practice and error: Students repeatedly practice, make errors, receive feedback, and make improvements.

Authentic tasks are a great way to plan a Create-level activity. Utilizing real-world problems is among the most influential instructional practices (Schroeder, Scott, Tolson, Huang, & Lee, 2007; Wenglinsky, 2004). When students are placed in real-world roles like journalists or investigators, they can engage in these higherlevel processes. In these roles, students can engage in the complexities of solving authentic problems. See table 2.2, which compares realistic and real problems.

Table 2.2: Realistic Versus Real Problems

Realistic Problems

Real Problems

Tasks or situations that are: • Plausible—Students recognize they could actually occur. • Interesting—Students expressed interest or have read, seen, or heard about them; they recognize them as pertinent to others. • Engaging—Students perceive them as worth their time and effort.

Tasks or situations that are: • Pertinent—Problems are actually present in the students’ experience. • Intensely involving—Students feel personal concern about them; they have an impact or personal effect on the students’ lives and experiences. • Demanding—Students perceive them as being important and necessary for investing time and effort. • Immersed—The task is part of the students’ current personal experience (living it). • Action essential—A situation the students will actually do something about or take action on.

Source: Adapted from Treffinger, Schooner, & Selby, 2013, p. 76.

There are three Create-level cognitive processes: (1) generating, (2) planning, and (3) producing.

Generating

When students engage in the generating cognitive process, they explore various ideas or solutions to solve an ill-defined problem through hypothesizing and exploring various relevant options. Often, these new ideas begin as a possibility to explore (Johnson, 2010). To begin this process, students must thoroughly research to understand a topic so the ideas they generate have logical connections to that topic. Their own ideas should also be varied (signifying flexible thinking), unique, and detailed.

To improve the process for students, defer judgment on the quality of their ideas until the end of the brainstorming process; have them brainstorm many ideas related to the topic, because quality is related to the quantity of ideas they produce; have them list and recognize all ideas as they might inspire other ideas; and have them seek to add on or combine ideas to improve them (Treffinger et al., 2013). Verbs often connected with tasks that involve the generating cognitive process include brainstorm, design, create, produce, construct, and improve. Collaboration (such as having students brainstorm individually and then work in groups to select the best ideas) is also a critical enhancer to Create-level projects (Reeves, 2015). The following are examples of activities that use the generating cognitive process. Subsequent tasks for different cognitive levels within the Create level build off these examples.

• Instruct students to select a U.S. president who must run again in the next presidential election. They determine which previous president would be the best choice to serve in the modern era.

• Instruct students to generate several potential thesis statements in response to an argumentative prompt; for example, ask them, “Should students be able to grade their teachers?”

• Instruct students to brainstorm ways they could investigate if vibrating materials can make sound and if sound can make materials vibrate.

Planning

Planning is the second step in the Create process. After generating the ideas, students then need to evaluate their options and select the best idea to carry out the project. Using the Evaluate level of Bloom’s taxonomy revised (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), students should sort, prioritize, categorize, and choose the best option (Treffinger et al., 2013). Typically, there is more than one way to solve the task, so students’ final products should vary greatly. Revising existing ideas or throwing them out in favor of new ideas is also often part of the planning process. The following are examples of activities that use the planning cognitive process.

• After students select their presidential candidate from the past, instruct them to act as his campaign managers by proposing a plan for the candidate’s political party on what they will do to ensure success in the next election.

• After students identify the best thesis statement for their project, instruct them to create an outline with the sources and evidence they will need to support their thesis statement.

• After students select the best way to investigate vibration, instruct them to plan their experiment by detailing what tasks they need to accomplish, what materials they need, and what their budget will be.

Producing

The final step in the Create-level process, producing, is to follow through with the plan and create the product. Creativity is a tricky thing to judge, but the following three criteria are very helpful: (1) novelty (an original outcome or process), (2) resolution (outcome addresses intended need), and (3) elaboration and synthesis (level of combining diverse components into a new, well-crafted product; Treffinger et al., 2013). Use a rubric like figure 2.1 (page 20) to assess students’ level of creative-thinking dispositions. The following are examples of activities that use the producing cognitive process.

• Instruct students to pitch their campaign plan (their created product) to the class. Peers should use a rubric to select which presentation persuasively convinces the class that their candidate is the best choice.

• Instruct students to write an essay by developing their outline into full paragraphs that support the evidence they chose.

• Instruct students to perform an investigation and write up their conclusions from their experiment. Students share what they learned and how they might improve their investigation if revising.

Seeing the Big Picture

Notice that as students work at the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy revised (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), the associated tasks typically require more of students and will take longer for them to complete. For example, if you ask students to name the main character in the story they could respond fairly quickly (Understand level); however, if you ask them to determine if the main character is a fraud by providing several examples of textual evidence (Evaluate level), this task requires more time for thinking. Most Create-level assignments should take several days or longer to complete. So, if you ask a question and hands immediately go up in your classroom to answer the question, your question was probably a low-level one.

Source: Boyes & Watts, 2009, p. 377.

Figure 2.1: Rubric for creating, imaging, and innovating.

Hopefully, these ideas spur your thinking on integrating critical thinking to engage learners in your classroom. Often, increasing the level of critical thinking does not require eliminating current assignments; rather, with some alterations, you can ratchet up your assignments to reach higher-thinking levels. As you grow to more accurately understand Bloom’s taxonomy revised (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), you can better identify ways to enhance the level of critical thinking in your classroom.

Discussion Questions

As you reflect on this chapter, consider the following five questions.

1. Consider your current teaching practices. Approximately what percentage of classroom time do your students spend working at each level? What would you want to change about those percentages and why?

2. What are some activities you use that operate at lower-thinking levels? What steps could you take to raise them to higher-level-thinking tasks?

3. What is one activity in this chapter that you could use with your students? What changes could you make to tailor it to your students and instructional content?

4. What kinds of new projects could you introduce to your students that operate at the Create level and allow your students to demonstrate semesterlong or yearlong growth in their learning?

5. What traits will you look for in your students to know when they are working and thinking at higher levels?

Take Action

Use the following four activities to put this chapter’s concepts to work in your own classroom.

1. Examine an assessment you use in your class to determine its thinking level.

2. Identify one classroom activity or assessment you use that operates at lower thinking levels and make adjustments to increase those levels.

3. Have students use an age-appropriate rubric to self-assess their level of critical thinking.

4. Have students use a debriefing matrix like the one in figure 2.2 to debrief about their project.

Source: Treffinger et al., 2013, p. 212.

Figure 2.2: Creative thinking four-part debriefing structure.