HOTS for Hats

It's about time, teachers, ... for Hat HOTS.

While this volcano hat is very nice, it's not exactly what I had in mind for HOTS - Higher Order Thinking Skills.

It is so fun and rewarding to challenge your children to use HOTS when studying hats.  I'm referring, of course, to Bloom's Taxonomy. Following are a few of the ways I exercise their brain power.

Analysis

Using my hat cards, I challenge the students to sort them in various ways:

• men's hats/women's hats/unisex
• safety/decorative/job identification
• historic/modern day
• similarities
• baseball cap, baby's bonnet, & cowboy hat = protection from the sun
• wizard's hat, witch's hat, & magician's hat = magic makers
• Pilgrim's hat & Santa's hat = holiday head gear
• jester's hat, crown, & knight's helmet = medieval hat wear

My enrichment students are asked to create their own sorts.    Then I require them to write about their thinking.  I up the ante for G/T students by asking them to create 3 to 5 different sorts with descriptions of their sorting properties.

Evaluation

Again using the hat cards, I challenge my students to make lists of hat opposites. Examples:

• astronaut's helmet and diving helmet
• mortar board and dunce's cap
• bridal veil and top hat

Students pick 2 cards and tell why the hats may go together. Examples:

• Top hat and fancy lady's hat - they might go to the symphony together
• football hat and stocking cap - you could find them both at a football game in November

Creation

Make "Hat Words."  We start by generating a list of -at words.  Then we turn them into 'Hat Words" and write clues to their meaning.  Examples:

• Hatmosphere - What do you call the blanket of air surrounding a hat?
• Hatlas - What do you call a book of maps that show you where head coverings may be found?
• Hattack - What do you call it when a hat tackles you?
• Hattic - What is the room at the very top of a hat building?

As you can tell, my students and I really get into hats.  So throw your hat in the ring and join me in teaching a hats unit.  My unit, Hats!  Hats!  Hooray for Hats!, is available on TpT and TN.  There are 55 pages to this unit, which includes printables, manipulatives, centers, and activities.  It even contains my original poem.  Be sure to get it's companion product, Hat Idioms Book.  Check it out because it is FREE and is being used by upper elementary and even middle school teachers.

  

Until next time,...

Sports Sorts

It's about time . . . for the Olympics.  

And, just in time for the Olympics, I am offering Sports Sorts.

Through simple sorts, children learn to recognize similarities and differences.  That, in turn, allows them to develop organized thinking.  Thus, they begin to make order out of chaos.  Sorts for early childhood classrooms lay down the foundations for sets & groups, attributes, and logical thinking.  Thus, CCSS now include standards for sorting in math.

Most early sorting tasks are directed, giving the children the parameters for the sorts.  With time, sorts become open ended.  At that point, children begin categorizing.  They are given a set of objects and challenged to construct their own, independent conditions and attributes.

When they begin categorizing, children are engaging in the upper levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.  They ANALYZE the elements and their relationships.  By combining the elements in new ways, the children are SYNTHESIZING.  When judging the elements according to their own parameters, they are EVALUATING.  I submit, then, that sorting and categorizing activities are HOTS activities.  As such, teachers of older children should include them in their math centers and explorations frequently.  In doing so, they are providing differentiated instruction to G/T students and promoting critical thinking in all of their students.

Following is a preview of Sports Sorts:

There are 20 picture cards in color.  There is also a black & white set.  This unit includes task cards for patterning, a work mat, and a recording sheet.  

Sports Sorts are available on TpT or TN for $2.50.

HOTS Activity

Did you find yesterday's TRIADS easy?  If you did, thank the teachers that encouraged you to use HOTS.  

Answer:  card

Answer:  brush

Weren't those fun?  Want to try some more?  

WARNING: TRIADS may be addicting!

If you like TRIADS, you might also enjoy:

  

H.O.T.S. Activity

It's about time, teachers, ...  to focus on Higher Order Thinking Skills (H.O.T.S.).  If we neglect to teach our students critical thinking skills, we do them a huge disservice.  There is an on-going debate about the role of HOTS in the elementary school.  Some contend that elementary students should focus on the basics (i.e. the lower 3 levels of Bloom's Taxonomy). Others argue that HOTS are essential to elementary education.  

In my opinion, this debate is moot, in as much as standards based curricula require HOTS.  In my own experience teaching K-5, Reading Recovery, Title I, enrichment, and self-contained gifted, for more than 3 decades, I absolutely believe teachers should give considerable attention to critical and creative thinking skills whether you subscribe to CCSS or not.  Even in teaching Reading Recovery, which suggests it's all about the basics, the most successful students were the ones who were able to grasp the idea that they should be constantly evaluating what they were reading.  In RR, we challenge our students to decide whether what they read makes sense, looks right, sounds right, ...   

Similarly, although at the other end of the spectrum, G/T and enrichment students need to be able to defend their thinking.  We do them wrong if we don't challenge them to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate/create.  G/T education calls for differentiation of instruction; a summons that is daunting to some educators.  But it does not have to be overwhelming, intimidating, or off-putting.  Consider the following activity:

TRIADS combine critical thinking with vocabulary development.  That's a win-win since students with larger vocabularies consistently perform far better than those with poorer oral language.  In working with TRIADS, your students will use analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  The challenge is to find 1 word that can be added to each of the triad words to make a well-known phrase or compound word.  The common word may be added before or after the triad words. For example, add GRASS to the triad words blue, hopper, and crab to make blue GRASS, GRASShopper, and crab GRASS.

Now try these two triads for yourself:

                          

TRIADS is a great activity for a literacy center or enrichment. It could also be used as an anchor or sponge activity.  My students beg to do these together, and, thus, I often grab a card when we are headed to our specials -- just in case we have to wait in the hallway for a minute or two.  You can almost see the cogs turning inside their heads!  What teacher doesn't love that???

Reproduce the cards on card stock, laminate, and use for years to come. Naturally, an answer key is included. This product is available on TpT and TN.  There are currently 3 versions of it, should your students love them as much as mine do.  Each set includes 24 TRIADS cards & an answer key for $2.60.  You get a lot of differentiation for very little money.  

How did you do with the 2 TRIADS?  Come back tomorrow to see if you found the common word.  

Higher Order Thinking Skills and much more!

Last week, I blogged about Bloom's Taxonomy and Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS).  (See April 2, 2012.)  My friend, Andrea, over at One Teacher's Take...is Another's Treasure commented that she also uses Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DOK) Levels and Marzano's Dimensions of Thinking, both of which are new to me.  So, I immediately googled them. Here's what I found. . .

Webb's DOK Levels look like this:

What I like about Webb's model is the 4 levels versus Bloom's 6.  It's always nice to condense things, isn't it?  At least in my realm of preparing dozens of lesson plans each day, less is more!  The 4 level descriptors (the inner circle) boast newer and somewhat clearer concepts.  

Then my eye wanders over the outer circle.  Ouch!  Another sea of verbs to swim through.  The 4th level, presumably the quarter in which we strive to spend most of our time, is curiously short on verbs compared to the other 75%.  Are those 8 verbs/phrases just more succinct?  Or, do they reflect the limitations foisted upon teachers by the Common Core of Teaching Standards, standardized testing, and uniform time lines?  Surely that triad has bearing on it.  

Perhaps there is more to be considered, however.  Is the 4th level truly where teachers strive to  be?  I hope, in my heart of hearts, that the answer is YES.  However, it is possible that some, if not many, teachers find little motivation to work on level 4.  Their efforts are not evaluated by standardized tests, depriving them of extrinsic approval.  Paychecks remain static whether teachers push their students toward extended learning or not.   Indeed, rewards are esoteric.  Certainly the dedicated, professional teacher experiences intrinsic satisfaction.  S/he may even be fortunate enough to receive accolades from students, parents, colleagues, and/or  administrators.  Is that enough? 

In a future blog, I'll discuss Marzano's Depth of Knowledge Levels.  Until then,  I'd love to hear your thoughts about teaching HOTS.  

HOTS or Bloom's Taxonomy

It's about time, teachers, ... to revisit Higher Order Thinking Skills or HOTS.  If you've been a teacher for more than 5 minutes, you must have some knowledge of Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.  Did you know Benjamin is not actually the author of the taxonomy?  It bears his name simply because he chaired the committee that developed it.  So, the next time someone asks you to chair a committee, you may want to say "Yes."

It seems like Bloom's Taxonomy has been around forever.  Actually, it's been around since 1956, which for most of the educators at work today IS forever.  It's been 56 years and it's still going strong.  Although, it has morphed some over the decades.  When 1st proposed, the taxonomy strove to deal with 3 domains of education: cognitive, affective, & psychomotor.  The goal of the 3 domains was to produce holistic education.  Over time, however, the cognitive domain has become the taxonomy we all think of when Bloom's Taxonomy is mentioned.  In fact, each domain was to have it's own handbook, but after publishing the cognitive domain  handbook, it took 8 years for the affective domain handbook to be written and the psychomotor domain handbook was never written!

Too often, I think, the taxonomy is taught and used in educating gifted and talented learners.  That may be a matter of practicality.  The taxonomy is scaffolded; the lower levels must be broad and strong in order for the upper levels to be built. In an age of standardized testing mania, knowledge and comprehension, the foundation levels, are the name of the game. Since those are the most easily evaluated components, performance is naturally based on those levels.  And so, I surmise that only the teachers of G/T have the time to work on the upper levels of the taxonomy since their students, presumably, have the requisite knowledge and understanding.    

Let's not dwell in the basement, teachers!  It takes more work to bring your students to the upper levels of the taxonomy. The payoff, however, is well worth the effort.  Who doesn't want to spend their time in the penthouse rather than the basement?

Following is Bloom's Taxonomy model in 2 versions:

Any student of the taxonomy knows that there are lists of verbs to help us remember how to incorporate each level into our teaching.  While I am a visual learner, perusing those lists tends to make my eyes roll to the back of my head.  So, I created the following visual to expeditiously remind me what each level should look like.

I don't know if Easter eggs brought this to mind or the hatchlings that spring promises us, but I do know that teachers everywhere need to break out of their shells and push their students to work in the higher levels.  Our children deserve to be grade A educated.

Now I'll climb down from my soap box and get back to dyeing eggs.