HOTS+and+LOTS

As educators we are promoting **lower order thinking skills as well as higher order thinking skills - or LOTS and HOTS** - within our students. Through the use of a variety of teaching techniques to promote LOTS and HOTS, the student will start to implement the application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation of new knowledge.

Higher-order thinking is thinking that takes place in the highest levels of cognitive processing. Bloom’s Taxonomy is the most widely accepted hierarchical arrangement of this sort in education and it can be viewed as a continuum of thinking skills starting with lower knowledge-level thinking and moving eventually to evaluation-level of thinking.

media type="youtube" key="qSFCEXMwtY0" height="315" width="560" align="center"

__**Blooms Taxonomy consists of six components**__:


 * Knowledge/remembering**- prior knowledge of a subject ('LOTS' - acquired knowledge)
 * Comprehension/understanding**- being able to explain and understand the knowledge ('LOTS' - acquired comprehension)
 * Application/applying** - being able to apply understandings or knowledge ('HOTS')
 * Analysis/analysing** - interpreting knowledge in relation to context ('HOTS')
 * Synthesis/evaluating** - applying knowledge in a new setting ('HOTS')
 * Evaluation/creating** - evaluating and creating knowledge (HOTS')

Higher-order thinking requires students to gather information and ideas through critical, creative and constructive thought processes. The translation of this information occurs when students combine facts and ideas in order to arrive at some favorable conclusion. Manipulating information and ideas through these processes allows students to solve problems and discover new (for them) meanings and understandings.

Critical/creative/constructive thinking is closely related to higher-ordered thinking and are unavoidably interwoven. These thinking processes progress upward in the given direction.

First one critically analyzes the knowledge, information, or situation in the 'cognitive' domain.

Then they creatively consider possible next-step options in the 'affective' domain.

Finally, they construct a new product, decision, direction, or value in the psychomotor domain.