Higher-Level Thinking Skills
INTERPRETING means explaining or showing what something means.
EXPLAINING means making something clear and understandable.
EVALUATING means judging, arguing, or estimating; expressing an opinion.
PREDICTING means foretelling or declaring beforehand; making a prediction.
OBSERVING means watching, paying attention to, or noticing.
ANALYZING means studying in detail; determining the evidence; breaking down a subject, separating the parts, and examining their relationship to each other.
CLASSIFYING means grouping into sections or categories; sorting or placing into classes.
SYNTHESIZING means pulling together; assembling into a whole; solving, planning, proposing, or constructing.
COMPREHENDING means describing or grasping; understanding; comparing and contrasting; explaining in one’s own words.
HYPOTHESIZING means assuming something for the sake of an argument; proposing a theory, explaining something.
MENTAL TRACKING OUT LOUD means talking to oneself.
What Parents Can Do to Encourage These Skills
- Cut out graphs, charts, tables, etc., from a newspaper or magazine. Ask your child to interpret the graphic. Give a prize for the effort.
- Inquire how things compare and contrast (are alike and are different).
- Routinely ask your child’s opinion on a subject or topic.
- Ask your child what he or she feels is going to happen.
- On a trip, ask your child to explain what he or she sees or notices.
- Frequently inquire of your child how parts or elements of something studied fit together.
- Ask your child to tell you into what groups certain items should be placed or arranged.
- Ask your child what he or she learned from a specific experience or school project.
- Ask your child what the author, speaker, presenter, teacher, or friend meant by what he or she said or did.
- Present this scene to your child: “What if you did …..? What do you think would happen?”
- Push your child to recite what he or she is mentally going through in figuring out an answer or problem. - Reciting experiences help to vitalize thought processes. Say, “Tell me what you were thinking and how you arrived at that.”