Introduction to Thinking Skills

Introduction to Thinking Skills

Thinking Skills Outline

Introduction

Incorporating into PATs

At-A-Glance: Download Links

Thinking Skills

Reasoning Processes

Additional Resources

Introduction

Go to Downloading Teaching Strategies Examples: Click Here

This page is designed for busy practitioners trying to design performance assessment tasks that align standards and benchmarks with assessments that really measure what's valued and that incorporate higher order thinking skills.

Thinking skills and reasoning processes are considered a critical element to designing purposeful performance assessment tasks, as well as thought-provoking pencil-paper test items by experts such as Jay McTighe, Grant Wiggins, Richard Stiggins, Art Costa and Robert Marzano, to mention but a few.

For decades, teachers have been learning about the levels of thinking skills/processes (i.e. Bloom’s Taxonomy) and attempting to provide work for their students in such a way that it provides the practice, rehearsal and scrimmage necessary for students to become competent thinkers.

What you find provided at this site, are templates reflecting a combination of the work of many great educational leaders, local as well as national. Some, dating back as far as Benjamin Bloom’s work of three to four decades ago, some as recent as Robert Marzano’s work in Dimensions of Learning and in Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education.

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Incorporating Thinking Skills into Performance Assessment Tasks

Attention to selecting which thinking skill or reasoning process that should be incorporated in a performance assessment task is the 2nd step in the nine step plan. The 1st step focuses attention on selecting the standard and benchmark that the task will assess. Step #2 asks the designer to choose a thinking skill or a reasoning process to provide structure for the task. The choice of a thinking skill or a reasoning process should answer the task design question: "What will students do to be able to show they understand the content chosen for them to learn?"

Once a task designer has selected the thinking skill or reasoning process to be incorporated in the performance assessment task from the At-A-Glance list, more detailed guidelines can be found by clicking on the name of the skill or process. Provided at those links will be detailed instructions for teaching a thinking skill; guiding questions, process steps and graphic organizers to be used to focus the learners; as well as checklists and rubrics to provide formative and summative feedback to students and their parents. Sample tracking matrixes and teacher observation forms are also featured to help educators document the balance and the frequency of the skills and processes being taught, supported and assessed.

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Instructional Framework: Assessment Component

At-A-Glance: Thinking Skills and Reasoning Processes

The following thinking skills and reasoning processes are linked to a web page that contains the downloadable resources on:

strategies for teaching a thinking skill/reasoning process
assessment checklist (K-2)
assessment student rubric
assessment teacher rubric

Thinking Skills		Stimulus Questions
extend & refining knowledge Dimension 3

1.	comparing	How might ___________ and ___________ be organized into groups? What are the rules or characteristics that have been used to form groups?

2.	classifying	How might ___________ be organized into groups? What are the rules or characteristics that have been used to form groups?

3.	induction	What conclusions could be drawn from the data?

4.	deduction	Are there specific rules operating? Are there things that must happen because of these rules?

5.	error analysis	Are there errors in reasoning or in a process that can be described?

6.	constructing support	Is there a position you want to defend on a particular issue?

7.	abstracting	What is the relationship that exists in ___________ ? What is the abstract pattern or theme that lies at the heart of the relationship?

8.	analyzing perspectives	What are the different perspectives or points of view on an issue?

Reasoning Processes		Stimulus Questions
using knowledge meaningfully Dimension 4

9.	decision making	Is there an important decision that should be studied or made?

10.	problem solving	Is there some obstacle that needs to be overcome?

11.	experimental inquiry	Is there a prediction about ___________ that can be made and then tested?

12.	invention	Is there something you want to create or improve upon?

13.	investigation
	historical	Is there something that happened in the past that could be studied?
	projective	Is there a possible or hypothetical event that could be examined?
	definitional	Is there a new concept or theory that could be described in detail?

(Source: Marzano, R., Pickering, D., & McTighe J. (1993). Assessing Student Outcomes: Performance Assessment Using the Dimensions of Learning Model. ASCD)

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Additional Teacher Resources

The following PDF files are a collection of national recognized examples of applications and implementations of thinking skills into the organization's curriculum and/or record keeping system. To view and print the materials you will need Acrobat Reader.

Core Thinking Skills Categorized by Intended Outcome for the Learner
[view/print pdf file]
Teaching Students to Think, Dr. John Langrehr
Record Keeping Matrix to Track Which Skills and Processes are Being Taught, Practiced and Assessed
[view/edit/print word file]
Adapted from Dimensions of Learning
Questions to Guide the Selection of the Thinking Skills/Reasoning Process to Incorporate into a Lesson
[view/print pdf file]
Assessing Student Outcomes: Performance Assessment Using the Dimensions of Learning Model, ASCD
Marzano, R., Pickering, D., and McTighe, J. (1993)
Teacher Observation Form
[view/edit/print word file]
Assessing Student Outcomes: Performance Assessment Using the Dimensions of Learning Model, ASCD
Marzano, R., Pickering, D., and McTighe, J. (1993)

Special Note:
To view and print pdf files you will need Acrobat Reader.
To view, edit and print word files you will need Microsoft Word.

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Material Use
Use of materials from this web site are provided to assist in the process of improving the quality of education everywhere. Therefore, you may use these materials freely, as is, if you are a full-time teacher or administrator for work within a school district. For all other uses, in part or whole, permission must be granted by the author.

Questions, comments, and other inquiries about Rubric, Teaching Strategies, Thinking Skills, or about the contents found on this page, can be directed to AEA 267 consultants.

Last Modified: Tuesday, June 08, 2004