How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom

Educators Know It's Important To Get Students To Engage In Higher-order Thinking. But What Does Higher-order Thinking Actually Look Like? And How Can K 12 Classroom Teachers Assess It Across The Disciplines? Author, Consultant, And Former Classroom Teacher Susan M. Brookhart Answers These Questions And More In This Straightforward, Practical Guide To Assessment That Can Help Teachers Determine If Students Are Actually Displaying The Kind Of Complex Thinking That Current Content Standards Emphasize. Brookhart Begins By Laying Out Principles For Assessment In General And For Assessment Of Higher-order Thinking In Particular. She Then Defines And Describes Aspects Of Higher-order Thinking According To The Categories Established In Leading Taxonomies, Giving Specific Guidance On How To Assess Students In The Following Areas: Analysis, Evaluation, And Creation; Logic And Reasoning; Judgment; Problem Solving; And Creativity And Creative Thinking. Examples Drawn From The National Assessment Of Educational Progress And From Actual Classroom Teachers Include Multiple-choice Items, Constructed-response (essay) Items, And Performance Assessment Tasks. Readers Will Learn How To Use Formative Assessment To Improve Student Work And Then Use Summative Assessment For Grading Or Scoring. Aimed At Elementary, Middle, And High School Teachers In All Subject Areas, How To Assess Higher-order Thinking Skills In Your Classroom Provides Essential Background, Sound Advice, And Thoughtful Insight Into An Area Of Increasing Importance For The Success Of Students In The Classroom--and In Life. General Principles For Assessing Higher-order Thinking -- Assessing Analysis, Evaluation, And Creation -- Assessing Logic And Reasoning -- Assessing Judgment -- Assessing Problem Solving -- Assessing Creativity And Creative Thinking. Susan M. Brookhart. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 150-152) And Index. Don't settle for assessing recall and comprehension only when you can use this guide to create assessments for higher-order thinking skills. Assessment expert Susan M. Brookhart brings you up to speed on how to develop and use test questions and other assessments that reveal how well your students can analyze, reason, solve problems, and think creatively. Her practical framework takes you through the steps of: (1) Identifying clearly the type of thinking that you want to assess; (2) Designing a task or test item that requires students to demonstrate the type of thinking you're looking for; (3) Determining how to interpret, evaluate, or score the results; and (4) Providing the right kind of materials to help students demonstrate their thinking. Discover how to make an assessment blueprint for any grade or subject that includes multiple-choice and constructed-response (essay) items plus performance assessment tasks. Whether you want to create formative or summative assessments, this book has what you need to create well-designed assessments that can bring thinking out of your students' heads and make it visible in their words and actions. This book contains six chapters: (1) General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking; (2) Assessing Analysis, Evaluation, and Creation; (3) Assessing Logic and Reasoning; (4)Assessing Judgment; (5) Assessing Problem Solving; and (6) Assessing Creativity and Creative Thinking. An introduction, afterword, and list of references are also included Front cover ......Page 1 Title page ......Page 4 Copyright ......Page 5 Contents ......Page 6 Introduction......Page 8 General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking......Page 24 Assessing Analysis, Evaluation, and Creation......Page 46 Assessing Logic and Reasoning......Page 68 Assessing Judgment......Page 91 Assessing Problem Solving......Page 105 Assessing Creativity and Creative Thinking......Page 131 Afterword......Page 149 References......Page 157 Index......Page 160 About the Author......Page 166 Back cover ......Page 169