21st Century Learning & Development
Intelligence and Higher Order Thinking
Teachers want to push the boundaries with their students. They want to engage their students in deeper thinking to bring out more of their potential, rather than just skimming the surface of the knowledge their student’s minds hold. Teachers want to broaden their student’s intelligence so their brains are able to encompass more ideas and concepts than they were able to in the pervious year. Intelligence is a biological and physiological potential; that potential is capable of being realized to a great or lesser extent as a consequence of the experiential culture and motivational factors that affect a person (Gardner, 1995). One thing that has to be remembered in a classroom is that there are a multitude of different intelligences that are present. What one student may excel in easily, another may have a very difficult time grasping.
Multiple Intelligence (MI) encompass how a student may best learn the material they are given. MI tests can be a great resource for a teacher to utilize and add to student portfolios. This way, the teacher can adjust their lessons according to what intelligences he/she has in her class. But, Gardner warns us that although most topics can be powerfully approached in a number of ways, there is no point in assuming that every topic can be effectively approached in seven ways (Gardner, 1995). A teacher may struggle in terms of multiple intelligences and trying to incorporate all their students’ intelligences into one lesson. This is nearly an impossible feat and will only end up ruining a lesson that could be potentially involve the students in high-order thinking.
In this regard, and many others, Blooms Taxonomy is an incredible tool that should be implemented into each classroom throughout the country. Blooms Taxonomy addresses learning, teaching, identifying educational goals and thinking as complicated concepts that are interwoven together (Forehand, 2005). For the purpose of 21st century teaching, I will stick with referring to the Revised Blooms Taxonomy. The revised version encompasses 6 categories that start from the bottom that are relatively simple and require low order thinking. As you work your way up the grid, the categories become progressively more complex and call for high order thinking in order to be completed. The framework consisting of the 6 categories requires achievement of the prior skill in order to be able to move to the next, more complex skill (Forehand, 2005). So there is no skipping steps when following Blooms Taxonomy and this is what allows the student to grasp a better intelligence of the material. Blooms Taxonomy is laid out in a clear and concise way that easily represents the alignment between standards and educational goals, objectives products and activities (Forehand, 2005).
An example of how the 6 categories of Blooms Taxonomy are used with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears that shows cognitive process a student would go through and how high-order thinking becomes apparent in the process
Remember: Describe where Goldilocks lived.
Understand: Summarize what the Goldilocks story was about.
Apply: Construct a theory as to why Goldilocks went into the house.
Analyze: Differentiate between how Goldilocks reacted and how you would react in each story event.
Evaluate: Assess whether or not you think this really happened to Goldilocks.
Create: Compose a song, skit, poem, or rap to convey the Goldilocks story in a new form.
Teaching Strategies
1. Be sure to follow Blooms Taxonomy! Have a poster of Blooms Taxonomy either in your personal teaching binder, or somewhere in your classroom so you can refer back to it when needed. Ask questions that start from the first category of “Remember” and work your way up to the last category of “Creating”. This will get your students comfortable with thinking about the material they just learned and as you
progress, they will be able to engage in high order thinking questions that fully engage their minds and require to dig deeper into their thinking process.
2. Create Students Profiles. At the beginning of each new semester or year, have your students fill out student profiles which give you a sense of who they are and how they like to learn, whether that be through hands on experiences lecturing, group work, etc. This will give you a heads up on how best your class learns, allowing you to adjust your lesson plans accordingly.
3. Include analytical, practical and creative thinking into your lessons. Psychologist Robert Sternberg developed a framework to follow that would lead to high order thinking called the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (Wilson, 2015). Involving these three types of learning into your lesson will allow students to gain a better understanding of the material and concepts that are being taught, as well as engage in high order thinking. Engaging in analytical thinking, students compare and contrast, analyze, critique and evaluate the material in front of them (Thomas & Thorne, 2009). Practical thinking requires the students to show how to use something or how it would be used in the real world (Thomas & Thorne, 2009). While creative thinking involves inventing, imagining, designing and showing how something would affect or change something, or stating what would happen if….(Thomas & Thorne, 2009). By implementing these ways of thinking into your classroom, you will be promoting high order thinking and have the students engaged in the material they are learning.
4. Clarify the difference between understanding and memorizing at the beginning of each new semester or year. By getting your students to grasp the difference between what is “understanding” and what is “memorizing” early on, will save them a lot of trouble in the long run. Once you have established what each word entails, put their definitions up on a word wall so students can refer back to each definition throughout the year. This way, students can even ask themselves, “Am I really understanding this or have I just memorized it?”, without you, as the teacher, being the one to ask them all the time.
Below are a few technology tools to incoporate into your classroom when promoting intelligence and higher order thinking
Technology Tools
1, Have your students partake a Multiple Intelligence test. Using this link, http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm. This will be a fun way for students to find out what kind of intelligence they possess. After they have done this, they can discuss their results with their classmate, In addition to this, an open class discussion can take place on Multiple Intelligences to give students more knowledge on their type of intelligence. These results can be added to their student profiles so as the teacher, you can see for yourself how these students learn best. But as stated above, it is important to keep in mind that it is impossible to teach a lesson that appeals to all of the different intelligences.
2. iMovie. Using iMovie you can get your students to create a mini story or comic either following guidelines given by you, the teacher, or have them create their own story lines. Once the students are finished creating their iMovie, students will be given a sheet with the 6 categories of Blooms Taxonomy on it. They will have to provide questions that correlate with each specific category of Blooms Taxonomy that are related to their iMovie production. Once they have completed this, students will partner up and watch each other iMovie and answer the 6 Blooms Taxonomy questions. This calls for higher order thinking while the students are creating their questions, and while they are answering their partners questions based on the iMovie that was created.