Nurturing cognitive skills in the primary classroom

Learning outcomes:  To know about a range of learning skills developed in

CLIL subjects from across the curriculum
 To be able to match learning skills with different
classroom examples

Introduction
The purpose of 21st century education is not just to teach the subjects on the
curriculum but about teaching the skills to be successful – the subjects are the
vehicle to teach those skills that students need to succeed in learning, work and
life in the information age.
In other words, the cognitive skills that students need to be able participate in
school, work, life etc.

What do we mean by thinking skills?

Thinking skills is a broad topic which would need a session all of its own but we
will give an overview here using Blooms Taxonomy (below)
Thinking skills can be divided into lower order thinking skills (LOTS) which we do
on a daily basis, and higher order thinking skills (HOTS) which are less practiced
in the classroom.
Teachers develop learners’ lower order thinking by asking questions to recall
information, to check understanding, to review learning.
Some examples of these are: what, when, where, which, who and how many?

As teachers we need to develop learners’ higher order thinking by asking

questions to develop reasoning skills, creative and critical thinking, enquiry and
evaluative skills.
Some examples of these are:(why, how can you… justify…, invent…, solve…
explain…change…create…? It is important to remember that questioning is the
foundation of HOTS

HOTS

LOTS

Why is it important to develop cognitive skills?

Cognitive skills are important in all aspects of life. Without them we cannot be
successful without having a higher order of thinking skills. By thinking deeply
about knowledge and information students will think deeply about issues. This in
turn will help them make connections with what they learn and what they already
know. To put is simply, without thinking learning cannot happen.

“Learning is the outcome of

thinking and as such gaining
insights into ways students think is
crucial for teachers, allowing them
to alter students’ dispositions.”

Caroti, Howell, Kester Dodgson – Making

Thinking Visible, 2017
How can we develop young learners’ thinking skills?

Look at the answer below. What do you think the question was?

288

There are many possibilities for the question and indeed each of you may have
well have come up with very different questions from each other. In fact, the
actual question was:

How many questions does the average 6-year-old ask in a day?

So, what does this mean for us as teachers? It might surprise you to learn that
when young learners enter school the number of questions they ask start to
decrease as we as teachers take over in asking the questions. It is therefore
important as teachers that we encourage our young learners to ask the
questions.

Now look at the following answers. Again, what

do you think the original questions were?

If watermelon is the answer. What was the

question?
If ‘I would be rich’ is the answer. What
would have been the question?

Again, there is no right or wrong answer but what this does is to encourage
learners to think in a more abstract way, i.e. out of the box.

Another way to get students to think using higher order thinking skills are riddles.
Look at the two riddles on the next page. What do you think are the answers?
  I rise in the morning
 I am hot
 I am bright
 Do not look straight at me
 I disappear at night
 I live in the sky

A cowboy rides into

town on Friday,
stays for three days,
and leaves on
Friday.
How did he do it?

In the case of the first riddle the answer is quite obvious – the Sun. However, we
can get our learners to use higher order thinking skills by revealing the clues one
at a time. For example, if we show only the first clue – I rise in the morning – then
this would elicit a number of answers, e.g., me, the local baker etc. However, as
we reveal each clue in turn, the number of possibilities for the answer reduce
each time until we are left with only one possible answer – the Sun.
The answer for the second riddle is not so straight forward and calls for the
learner to think in much more abstract or divergent ways than for the previous
riddle (in this case the answer is his horse is called Friday!). The point here is to
get your learners to ask questions. Riddles can be very good for this and they
are quite easy to find online.
 Using Wonderwalls in the classroom

Another way to encourage your learners to ask

questions is a Wonderwall (see example left). These
can be put up in the corner of a classroom or the
back of the classroom door. Students who have any
questions they would like to know the answer to can
post their question (preferably in English but also in
L1) on the Wonderwall. At the end of each class or
beginning of the next class the teacher can randomly
select a few to read out and answer (always in English).

Different types of questions in the classroom

Look at the illustration below. What do you think it represents?

There are two types of questions that we as teachers can ask our leaners and
conversely our students can ask us– chubby or skinny. To develop cognitive
thinking, we need to ask more ‘chubby’ questions.
Look at the activity below which is a text about Machu Picchu which questions do
you think are ‘chubby’ and which are ‘skinny’?

1. In which country is Machu Picchu?

2. Is Mach Picchu 500 years old?
3. Who destroyed Mach Picchu?
4. Why do you think they built a city
in the clouds?
5. Why do you think it was
destroyed?
6. What do you think it would have
been like to live there?
You may have noticed when analyzing the questions that questions 1-3 are
closed questions, i.e. they can be answered with a word or short phrase while
questions 4-6 are what we call information questions where the answers can be
more varied. This should give you a clue as to the difference between ‘skinny’
questions which activate lower order thinking skills (LOTS) and ‘chubby
questions’ which encourage our learners to use higher order thinking skills
(HOTS). Questions 1-3 are, of course, ‘skinny’ or ‘thin’ questions. They ask
learners to recall learned facts about Machu Picchu, (Peru for Q1, Yes/No for Q2;
the Spaniards for Q3) whereas questions 4-6 are ‘chubby’ or ‘fat’ questions. In
these the answers are more open ended and encourage learners to think in a
more abstract way where they have to use HOTS.

‘Skinny Questions’ Chubby Questions

 Will only get only one or two
word answers
 Yes or no questions
 Don’t ask about information
 Ask only about basic facts
 Will be answered with lots of
information
 Get at the main ideas of the
story or the book.
 May be about feelings
 Ask about opinions
 Maybe to clarify things students
 Ask if students have ever had
similar experiences
 Make predictions
 Explain how or why
 Make connections or
comparisons
We need to have a mixture of skinny questions and chubby questions to ensure
that our students are being engaged in higher order thinking skills. Chubby
questions are more effective as they require students to think more deeply, to
perceive more widely and to feel more strongly about what they are learning.
These are the type of questions you should be getting your learners to ask with
the Wonderwall from the previous section rather than simple YES/NO questions.
Just simply adding Why …? to a question means you are already moving from a
simple skinny question to a more complex chubby question. Questions like, Why
do you think that? or, Why do you say that? will automatically make learners
stop and think - to analyse and evaluate why they think something and explain it.

Cognitive skills across the curriculum

Look at the think bubble below what do you think it represents?

In CLIL contexts learners need the language of thinking from the start of their
programmes. Unlike ELT contexts, CLIL learners need, for example, the
language of prediction for science, the language of comparison for maths, the
language of deduction for history.
What thinking verbs can you think of? Add as many as you can to the spidergram
below. One has been done for you.

identifying

Thinking skills
 Your completed spidergram should look something like the one below, ther
‘thinking verbs’ you could add would be creative thinking and evaluating.

ordering

identifying comparing
and
contrasting
g

Thinking skills

reasoning
classifying

hypothesising predicting

Look again at the completed spidergram. Which of the thinking skills do you think would
demand LOTS and which would demand HOTS?

LOTS: e.g., identifying, comparing and contrasting, classifying

HOTS: e.g., predicting, reasoning, hypothesising, creative thinking, evaluating

Look at the example of cognitive skills and related classroom activities in the table on
the next page. Can you think of an example activity for each one?
Think about the activities your learners do (answers at the end of this reading).
Cognitive Skills
Remembering
(thinking about things you know)
Identifying
(showing a relationship between
things)
Ordering
(putting things in a particular place)
Rank ordering
(putting in order of size, importance,
success, etc.)
Defining
(saying what someone or something
is)
Comparing and contrasting
(finding similarities and differences)
Dividing
(separating into smaller groups)
Classifying
Putting things into groups according
to their features/ qualities)
Predicting
(saying what you think will happen
next)
Hypothesising
(suggesting what could happen or
have happened without knowing it
to be true)
Reasoning
(thinking why, what causes and what
results in something)
Creative thinking/ synthesis
(producing imaginative ideas or
thoughts from previous knowledge)
Evaluating
(saying if something is good, useful,
effective or not)
Now look at the activities on the next page and decide which demand lower order
thinking skills and which demand higher order thinking skills.
Write the numbers under the two headings. Then think about your curricular subject(s),
Classroom activities Example Activity
Recall, recite, recognize, relate, Take turns to recite a verse
spell, tell from the poem about autumn
(literacy)
Identify, label, list, locate,
match, name
Order, organize, sequence
Order, put, place
Define, explain, outline, show,
translate
Compare, contrast, distinguish,
investigate the similarities and
differences
Divide, separate, share
Classify, categorise, decide
which group, put into
Predict, think about, guess
Suggest, decide, imagine,
suppose
Choose, conclude, decide,
imagine, suppose
Imagine, build, change,
compose, create, describe,
decide, invent, make up, plan,
produce, suppose
Assess, comment on, give an
opinion, judge, rate
what activities do you use which demand LOTS and HOTS? Add them to the bottom of
the table (answers at the end of the reading).
Activities from CLIL classrooms
1. Classify the musical instruments into
three sets. Which features do they
have they in common?
2. Imagine you had no electricity. How
would it affect your life?
3. Compare the river Nile and the river
Ganges. Write down three
similarities and three differences
4. Sequence the following inventions
on the timeline
5. How would you change the
experiment to make sure it was a fair
test?
6. Read your partner’s report on
industrial paints. Comment on how
clearly it was written
7. Record the data about rainfall on the
graph and decide which data goes
on the X-axis and which on the Y-
axis
8. Suggest two alternative solutions to
the maths problem and explain how
you worked them out
9. Look at the three paintings and tell
your partner which colours are the
most dominant.
10. Look at the table of imports and
exports and then list those which
have increased in the last five years.

LOTS HOTS

Example from your curricular subjects Example from your curricular subjects:

1 1

2 3

Visible Thinking Routines

In early childhood settings play a really important roles in shaping the dynamics of
the classroom including the learning environment as a whole. Visible thinking
routines can help you direct classroom learning and structure classroom discussions
in a more ordered way. They facilitate communication, learning, and of course
thinking and they engage learners in ritualized interactions that respond to a
common goal which is participation in activities that shape the culture of learning.
Thinking routines involve all learners as all learners can think. The pressure is on the
process and not necessarily on the production of language (in this case English).
There are plenty of routines that can be used in the young learner classroom, for
example, think about the start or the end of a lesson. Thinking routines specifically
visible thinking routines can help promote and develop young learners higher-order
thinking skills – research from Harvard university shows that the human brain is
predisposed to seek, recognise, extract, and categorise information from schemata
that are shaped by routines. Routines are vital in young learners’ lives, they can
expand and develop their cognitive strategies when they are exposed to routines
because routines constitute a major form of organising memory and thinking.
So what kind of routines are we looking at? Short, easy to learn activities that extend
and deepen students thinking which can be used at any time in your class, e.g.,
circle time, group or pair work even play time activities.
Key goals:
 Deeper understanding of context
 Greater motivation of learning
 Development of learner’s thinking and learning abilities
 Development of learner’s attitudes to learning
 A shift in classroom culture towards a community of engaged thinkers and
learners
For more information and ideas on visible thinking routines follow the link below
https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines
All of the core thinking routines above are transferable to our classrooms. Let’s
look at some of these in turn.

Think Pair and Share

Answer the questions

1. What are three things you can do

with an old water bottle?
2. What’s the Ecological Bottle House
made of?
3. How many glass bottles did Ingenieri
use to make his house?
4. What do the artists from Argentina
want to teach people?
5. Why did Maria Ponce build her house
from bottles?

A lot of the time students are reluctant to speak because they haven’t had time to
think. By giving them thinking time, e.g., 60 or 90 seconds, to think about the
question (or scenario), then put them in pairs to share their ideas (Do they have
similar ideas or not? Do they reinforce each other’s suggestions?) this instills
their confidence in their answers and they are more likely to want to share their
ideas with the class.
If you look at the first question in the task above this can be used as a pre-
reading task to engage students’ in the lesson and also to create a class
discussion. The other questions can be used to get students to predict what they
think the answers will be thereby providing motivation for them to read to see if
their guesses were correct.
 Think, Puzzle, and Explore
1. What do you think you
know about this topic?
2. What questions or puzzles
do you have?
3. What does the topic make
you want to explore?

The above activity is not overly dissimilar to Think, Pair and Share. Think, Puzzle, and
Explore activities are a good routine to instill your learners before doing a reading
activity. It encourages or activates prior knowledge, generates ideas and curiosity and
sets the stage for deeper enquiry. Activities like this can not only be done before a
reading but also before a listening or video and even at the beginning of a unit. For
example, if we look at question 2 it might generate questions like, When does
somebody or something become noisy? Can you measure noisiness? Is it against the
law to be noisy? What can governments do to reduce noise? What can we do? Am I too
noisy? How can I stop my neighbours from being so noisy? Why do people like to play
their music so loud? etc.
What other questions can you think of? What are you puzzling about?
Question 3 is post-reading and essentially puts the onus on learners to go out and
research their answers – in effective what you are doing is extending their learning
outside the false environs of the classroom and into the real world.

Think, Puzzle and Explore is very similar to KWL Charts which in itself is another
thinking routine.
 KWL Chart
What I know

What I want
to know

What I learnt

KWL Charts puts the focus on the learners, it gets them asking their own questions
Connect – Extend – Challenge
The purpose of Connect – Extend – Challenge routines is to get learners to make
connections between new ideas and prior knowledge but it also encourages learners to
take stock of ongoing questions, puzzles, and difficulties as they reflect on what they
are learning.
For example, the first question connects what leaners already know with the topic –
rivers. This should hopefully generate a number of facts and figures your learners know
about rivers.
Question 2 is effectively post -reading, in other words, What did your students learn?
What did they not know before hand? Essentially a question like this encourages your
learners to reflect on the learning process
Connect – Extend – Challenge

1. What do you already know about

rivers

2. What new ideas or impressions do

have that extend your thinking in
new directions?

3. What is challenging or confusing?

What do you still wonder about?

.
The final question (3) comes back to the idea of wondering, i.e. What do I still
wonder about the topic? Am I asking the right questions? As teachers we want to
encourage learners to think in this way because no text, video etc. is going to
answer all the questions we or your learners will want to ask. What does it make
you want to know more about? Again, it goes back to that process of developing
thinking skills.

I see … I think … I wonder

Another thinking routine that is very simple and effective in all classrooms is I see
… I think … I wonder … This kind of activity is more about the image and the
purpose is to encourage students to make, in the first case, observations and
thoughtful interpretations of an image. It helps to stimulate their curiosity and
encourage higher levels of inquiry. For example, your learners may say, I see a
house that looks like something out of a fairy tale. The windows are strange. It’s
very colorful. It has a lot of balconies. I think it might be in (Spain). It must be
expensive to live there. The architect who designed it must have been very
eccentric. I wonder why the architect designed a building like that. I wonder
what’s it like to live there. Is it comfortable? etc.
 Where do you live?

I see …

I think …

I wonder …

As your students think about their answers to the prompts you could have them
write them down (snack writing). By getting our students to think about the image
we encourage them to go from lower-order thinking skills (I see … ) to higher-
order thinking skills (I think … I wonder …).

The connection between images and thinking is not new; it goes back to Aristotle
2,500 years ago. He tells us …

Without image,
thinking is
impossible.

Aristotle
You see something, you think something, you have questions about it. For example, if
you look at the picture on the next page you’re first reaction might be, What is going on
there? Who are the people? Where are they? Why would they want to do this? etc.

Using thought provoking images is exactly that – it provokes thought, in other words it
makes you think.
Look at the second example below. Try asking yourself questions about the image
using the question prompts provided. Using the question prompts alongside an image
can help support your leaners in coming up with their own questions to ask about the
image. Activities like this buy into the whole idea of Visual Literacy Enquiry.
 Visual Literacy Enquiry

With lower-level learners we need to give them more structure, so we can actually give
them the questions to answer for themselves. It encourages them to think more
creatively as the visually literate viewer looks at the image he/she will
carefully and critically look for the intentions of why the photograph was taken or why
the artist etc. decided to create this image. As learners get older we can connect them
to the real world through images like this, by doing so we not only build their knowledge
of the world but also their cognitive skills as well.
Another thinking routine you could possibly is use is Beginning – Middle – End. This
activity is best for older learners and calls for more creativity which is still a thinking skill.
Show your learners a picture and give them a choice.
 Beginning – Middle – End

If the photo is the beginning of a

story, what might happen next?

If the photo is the middle of a story,

what might have happened before?
What might be about to happen?

If the photo is the end of a story, what

might the story be?

As learners have the input of the image it gives them something tangible for them to
work from. Images like the one above are a good way to get learners thinking and
talking, i.e. it helps to develop learners’ thinking skills. Remember these are warm up
activities only as a lead in to the main task.

Developing cognitive engagement through other activities

So far, we have looked at, asking questions and thinking routines but there are other
ways

“Activities which are meaningful and at

the same time are intellectually
challenging are more likely to achieve a
higher level of cognitive engagement from
learners than those activities that can be
somewhat over simple from a cognitive
point of view.”

Herbert Puchta, Developing Thinking Skills in the Young

Learners’ Classroom, p6

Though learners may have a low level of the language of instruction in their school, e.g.
English, it doesn’t mean that they have a low level of cognitive ability, so we still need to
challenge them. If an activity is meaningful and challenging then there will be a greater
level of engagement.
As teachers we should be teaching the thinking skills below to our young learners.

A typology of thinking skills areas to be taught

with CLIL for young leaners
Making comparisons Exploring numbers
Categorising Exploring time
Sequencing Creating associations
Focusing attention Cause and effect
Memorizing Making decisions
Exploring space. Solving problems
Adapted from Teaching Young Learners to Think, Puchta & Williams

For example, imagine you are doing a unit about transport and you may have already
taught your students the following words and gone through definitions and done some
practice with them.

bicycle boat plane helicopter car train

bus ferry tram truck motorbike

We may think students know them but in actual fact all that has been done so far are
the lower-order thinking skills – they’ve remembered them and they’ve understood
them. However, how do we move these words to higher-order thinking skills? We can
do this by giving them a categorising task where they think more deeply about these
modes of transport. We could give them the following tasks.

Task 1: List the transport in order from fastest to slowest

This is not always as clear cut as it might seem, e.g. Which is faster a bus or a tram?
This gets students thinking about the words on a higher level.

We could also give them other tasks. For example:

Task 2: List the modes of transport from the most enjoyable to the least
enjoyable.

Task 3: List the modes of transport from being the greenest to the least green.
By recycling the vocabulary, we are allowing our learners to play with it in a different
way on a higher level. They are thinking about their answers.

Another example could be with technology. Students put the following technology in a
timeline, i.e. the chronological order they were invented.

mobile phone car washing machine the internet

TV camera fridge iPad computer plane

We could also ask them to do other tasks associated with the vocabulary, e.g.

List them in importance to society

List them in importance to YOU.

Each time there will be a different answer which means your students will be thinking all
the time especially with the third task which would elicit a very personal response and
generate a variety of reasons from students for their answers. For example, the mobile
phone might be the most important invention to several of your students but the reason
why it is important to them may well differ from student to student.
Another type of categorization activity is odd one out and this gets learners thinking
both critically and creatively. For example, if we have been teaching a unit about food
and we have taught these words:

peach strawberry melon pineapple grapes

We can ask our students which one they think is the odd one out. With this activity there
is no right answer unlike if you had listed four different fruits and one vegetable. In this
case rather than identifying the vegetable as being the odd one out, learners have to
create their own answers, e.g. grapes is plural, grapes is a berry, strawberry because it
is the only one which has its seeds on the outside, peach because it has a stone etc.
Have a look at the following list, which one is the odd one out?

dog cat fish pig cow

The logical answer would be fish because it is the only one that lives in water but other
possible answer might be: cow as it’s the only one with horns/ we drink the milk of, cat
because it’s the only one that has nine lives/ has fur, pig because it’s the only one that
has got a snout/ trotter/ curly tail etc.
By doing activities like these where the odd one out is not so obvious we are
encouraging our learners to think in more abstract ways.
Sequencing activities
These kinds of activities are good for getting students to notice - for example, if we
wanted to revise a lexical set on animals.

???

We can create a logical sequence which we can display on the board in the classroom
and elicit from our students which animal is missing, i.e. completes the sequence.
To us this may seem quite a simple activity as we have high-order thinking skills but
sequencing activities are not always so clear.
Look at this sequence, what is missing?

???

What was your answer? Why do you think the missing picture is the drums, the piano,
the guitar? By asking our students why they think the answer is what they said they are
analyzing the sequence, that is they are using higher-order thinking skills and at the
same time they are recycling the vocabulary. The activity deepens students learning, it
engages their higher-order thinking skills and it makes it more memorable as learners
think they are having fun.
The next step with your learners would be to have them create their own sequences to
test their classmates which they share around the class and do in pairs. When you do
this activity on a regular basis you will notice your students become more confident in
figuring out how task works; at the same time, it’s a very clear language game, in this
case the revision of a lexical set.

“If you work on children’s thinking skills on a regular basis, the

development of their thinking skills will also enhance cognitive
resources that supports the child’s language learning”
Herbert Puchta

Language learning is about noticing patterns, there is a logical mathematical

competency that is needed for language learning. If you work on children’s’ thinking
skills on a regular basis it will also enhance cognitive resources which supports the
child’s language learning as language learning is all about noticing patterns.
Sequencing activities facilitates noticing patterns. For example, if we are teaching the
past continuous we can give our learners a sequence of sentences and ask them what
patterns can they notice or identify in them.

What patterns can you notice in these sentences?

 The wind was blowing when the tree fell.

 The children were smiling as I told my joke.
 I was walking to school when I saw a car crash.
 I was making dinners when I heard a knock on the door.
 All the lights went out while I was watching TV.

Hopefully, your learners will have used their cognitive processes, i.e. their learning
skills, to see that all the main verbs end in -ing, or that they are preceded by was or
were. We can also help our learners by asking questions such as,
What verb form comes after was/ were?
Which event happened first?
Was the first event still happening when the second event occurred?
Questions like these can help learners notice patterns which facility ate language
learning. By asking students what patterns can they identify we put the onus on them,
i.e. its problem solving, it’s critical thinking, it’s helping to develop the cognitive abilities
of your learners.
We can also do the same with vocabulary, especially prefixes and suffixes. For
example, What do all these prefixes have in common? - they’re all nouns, they’re all
verbs, they’re all negative in meaning etc.

Key concepts
1. Learners need progressively challenging tasks so they can develop their thinking
skills. e.g.
(maths) Measure the radius of the circle. How can you calculate the diameter?
(music) How many beats are in the bar? Why does the composer change the
rhythm?
2. Learners benefit from a language rich classroom which helps them to think and
learn well, e.g. posters related to the curriculum subjects on the wall labelled with
key content vocabulary and with two or three questions beside them.

Learners need wait time.

They need opportunities to stop, think, and process curricular concepts and
language.
This helps them give longer answers, become more involved, add to what other
learners say and offer alternative ideas.

We need to look at tasks and be aware of the cognitive demands required

of the learners.
Are the concepts too easy?
Are the concepts too difficult?
 Types of thinking Types of questions
• concrete thinking
(defining) What is a race?
(recalling facts) Where did the race start?
(recalling facts) Where did the race take place?

• reasoning
(examining parts Why is this an abstract painting?
and how they
relate)
• creative
(imagining) How would you paint these
shapes to show action?
• abstract
(finding patterns What links can you make
and connections) between the artist's ideas?
• evaluative
(judging) How has your work improved
this term?

Practice task

These tasks are from a history course book. Look back at the list of cognitive skills
(page 9) to help you.
Which cognitive skills do they aim to develop?

A. Study the pictures of metal working techniques in the Metal Ages.

First order the pictures. Then match the texts with the correct pictures.
B. Look at the photos on this page. What was the purpose of each object?
C. If the objects A and B were found in a tomb, what would this tell us about the
occupation of the dead person?
(from Essential Geography and History 1, Santillana Richmond 2008)

“A rule that has been ‘discovered’ is more memorable than one that has
been presented”
By taking a more inductive approach - giving lots of examples for our students to work it
out for themselves - it involves our learners in the process.

“Education is not
about learning the
facts, but training
the brain to think.”
Albert Einstein

By including higher-order thinking skills in the syllabus or any kind of educational

context is important. Students not only need to be encouraged to think they also need to
be taught to think – to be shown how to think. When we do this in our classes by
encouraging them to ask questions, by getting them to ask the right kind (chubby) of
questions, using the Wonderwall, using riddles, incorporating thinking routines, using
images to develop thinking skills, categorizing and sequencing, noticing patterns we
enhance our learners’ higher-order thinking skills.
How will you build a culture of thinking in your classes?
Reflection
Which of these statements do you agree with and why? Think about the materials you
use for your subject/s.
1. There should be a wider assessment framework … which would allow the
abilities that can be developed from a bilingual context (such as creativity,
communicative competence and interpersonal skills) to be recognized more fully.
2. Testing and assessment procedures need to be introduced that allows learners
to show the breadth of their knowledge and skills in relation to both content and
language.
3. Formal recognition of learner achievement in certain types of CLIL should be
made at national level.
4. I’m a maths teacher so I only assess content. If there are language problems,
then it’s up to the language teacher to correct them.
 Choose one of the following activities and put it in your teacher portfolio.

Discovery Activities
1. Find a picture, poster or diagram for your teaching programme. Write three or
four questions to develop your learners’ cognitive skills. Find some more
pictures or diagrams and ask your learners to write questions about them.
Which questions do they think are easy to answer and which are more
difficult? Why?
2. Look at a unit or handouts used at the beginning of one of your courses or
modules. Read the activities for learners. Do they progress from developing
lower order thinking skills to higher order thinking skills? Which cognitive skills
do they develop?
3. Look at a unit or handout from the end of one of your courses or modules.
Read the activities for learners. Are they more challenging than at the
beginning of the course or module? If not, how could you adapt them to
develop higher order thinking skills?
4. How do you know if your learners are developing reasoning, enquiry, creative
thinking and evaluation skills?

Cognitive skills across the curriculum – answers

Activity 1: Possible answer key

Cognitive Skills Classroom activities Example Activity

Remembering Recall, recite, recognize, relate, Take turns to recite a verse from
(thinking about things you know) spell, tell the poem about autumn (literacy)
Identifying Identify, label, list, locate, match, Name three different types of
(showing a relationship between things) name musical instruments you can see in
the picture (music)
Ordering Order, organize, sequence Write the date on the time-line in
(putting things in a particular place) the order of when they happened
(history)
Rank ordering Order, put, place Put the statements in order of
(putting in order of size, importance, importance to describe what
success, etc.) makes an ideal farmer.
(geography)
Defining Define, explain, outline, show, What kinds of colours did you use
(saying what someone or something is) translate to pain the landscape? (art)
Comparing and contrasting Compare, contrast, distinguish, Find three similarities and
(finding similarities and differences)
Dividing
(separating into smaller groups)
Classifying
Putting things into groups according to
their features/ qualities)
Predicting
(saying what you think will happen next)
Hypothesising
(suggesting what could happen or have
happened without knowing it to be true)
Reasoning
(thinking why, what causes and what
results in something)
Creative thinking/ synthesis
(producing imaginative ideas or thoughts
from previous knowledge)
Evaluating
(saying if something is good, useful,
effective or not)
investigate the similarities and
differences
Divide, separate, share
Classify, categorise, decide which
group, put into
Predict, think about, guess
Suggest, decide, imagine, suppose
Choose, conclude, decide, imagine,
suppose
Imagine, build, change, compose,
create, describe, decide, invent,
make up, plan, produce, suppose
Assess, comment on, give an
opinion, judge, rate
differences between your capital
city and one in another continent.
(geography)
I’m going to divide the class into
teams of six to play volleyball. (PE)
Classify the rocks into different
groups (science)
Predict what will happen when
when more water is added to the
solution (science)
If global financial systems broke
down, suggest what could happen.
(economics)
Justify the increase in spending on
wages last year (economics)
Invent a new symbol for saving
water (citizenship)
Read your partner’s report on wind
farms and comment on how clearly
it was written. (environment)

Activity 2
1. LOTS 6. HOTS
2. HOTS 7. LOTS
3. LOTS 8. HOTS
4. LOTS 9. LOTS
5. HOTS 10. LOTS

Practice task: A ordering, then identifying

B reasoning from historical sources
C hypothsising