REVISITING 21 CENTURY

ST

SKILLS VIS-À-VIS THE K-12

MATH CURRICULUM
■ What comes to your mind when you hear
the term 21st Century Learning?
OBJECTIVE:
■ 1. Identify the desired set of 21st Century Skills
that the K to 12 Program aims to develop among
the students and how these skills relate to the
teaching of Math;
■ Relate the purpose of K-12 content and
performance standards in the development of
students’ scientific reasoning and skills.
 Case 1 (Math)
■ MATHEMATICS GRADE  5 – NUMBER SENSE

CONTENT STANDARD: The student is able to demonstrate understanding of percent.

PERFORMANCE STANDARD: The student is able to apply percent in mathematical problems
and in real-life situations.

Four teachers came up with the following assessment items to get evidence of student
achievement of the above standard. Determine which assessment item the K to 12 program says
should be used to obtain evidence of student achievement of the above standard. 

Teacher 1: 50% of 67
Teacher 2: 41 of 91
Teacher 3: Joel answered 21 questions correctly out of 35 on his science test. What percent did he
answer correctly?
Teacher 4: During the 2016 Rio Olympics Basketball games, team USA shot 21 out of 28
attempted free throws while team Argentina put in 16 out of 23 attempted free throws. As a sports
analyst, who will you report had the better percentage? How do you know that your answer is
correct?
What skills must be developed by our 21 st
Century Learners in the K-12 program to
be globally competitive?
How do these skills help?
■ Which of the reasons you gave are clearly
aligned with the goals of the K to 12
program?
■ In our work as 21st Century Math teachers,
what do we need to constantly do?
Developing Higher Order Thinking Skills
(HOTS)
■ The main goal of educators today is to teach students the skills
they need to be critical thinkers. Instead of simply memorizing
facts and ideas, children need to engage in higher levels of thinking
to reach their fullest potential. Practicing higher order thinking
skills (HOTS) outside of school will give kids and teens the tools
they need to understand, infer, connect, categorize, synthesize,
evaluate, and apply the information they know to find
solutions to new and existing problems.
Skills for the 21st Century: Teaching Higher Order
Thinking
Brookhart (2010) identifies definitions of higher order
thinking as falling into three (3) categories:
1. Those that defines higher order thinking in terms of
transfer
2. Those that define in terms of critical thinking, and
3. Those that define it in terms of problem solving.
In the category of transfer: Anderson,Krathwohl et al
(2001) define transfer in how it differs from retention:
Two of the most important educational goals are to
promote retention and to promote transfer (which
when it occurs, indicates meaningful learning) …
retention- requires that students remember what
they have learned, whereas transfer – requires
students not only to remember but also to make sense
of and be able to use what they have learned.
The critical thinking category – includes definitions
that refer to ‘reasonable, reflective thinking that is
focused on deciding what to believe or do’ and
‘artful thinking’ , which includes reasoning.,
questioning and investigating, observing and
describing, comparing and connecting, finding
complexity, and exploring viewpoints.
In the problem solving category Brookhart provides the following
definition:
A student incurs a problem when the student wants to reach a specific
outcome or goal but does not automatically recognize the proper path
or solution to use to reach it.

To reach the desired goal, she must use one or more higher order
thinking processes. These thinking processes are called problem
solving. These may include remembering information, learning with
understanding, critically evaluating ideas, formulating creative
alternatives, and communicating effectively.
Students are engaged in higher order thinking
when they:
 Visualize a problem by diagramming it
 Separate relevant from irrelevant information in a word problem
 Seek reasons and causes
 Justify solutions
 See more than one side of a problem
 Weigh sources of information based on their credibility
 Reveal assumptions in reasoning
 Identify bias or logical inconsistencies
Why do we want to teach higher order
thinking?
Knowledge obtained through higher order thinking processes
is more easily transferable, so that students with a deep
conceptual understanding of an idea will be much more likely
to be able to apply that knowledge to solve new problems.
III.
How do we teach Higher Order
Thinking?
STRATEGIES:
1. Teach skills through real-world contexts. In higher
order thinking, you ask students to make decisions, rather
than simply follow a prescriptive path.
If you are teaching various arithmetic operations, let them set
up a store and apply the concept of buying and selling.
2. Vary the context in which students use a newly taught skill.
Introduce students with a variety of real-world contexts in which a
particular skill is used. The more settings in which a student uses some
new element of knowledge, the more the student internalizes the
deeper conceptual implications and applications of knowledge.

Ex: To teach addition of decimals, expose them to samples that are

measured in metric units; e.g. arm length or arm span, foot, waistline,
neck, head, wall or door.
3.
Throughout your instruction, take every opportunity to
emphasize the building blocks of HOT.

Teach content in ways that require students to:

 Build background knowledge
Classify things into categories.
Arrange items along some dimensions.
Make hypotheses
Draw inferences.
Analyze things into their components.
Solve problems.
4. Encourage students to think about the thinking strategies they
are using.

• Think analytically about problem definitions (‘What do I have to

accomplish? What am I allowed to do? What skills can I transfer to
this problem? What information is relevant to this problem?)
• Think about planning (‘How should I approach this problem? What
additional resources or information do I need?)
• Purposefully allocate time and energy (‘How do I prioritize my
tasks in order to most efficiently solve this problem?
Situations, skills and outcomes are the components that
challenge the thinker to do higher order thinking.

Metacognitive thinking is linked with problem finding

and creativity through activities of planning, self-
monitoring of progress, and self-adjustments to
problem solving strategies.
 Bridges – Connecting Networks and Operations

Linkages Schemata Scaffolding

Extension of prior Network, organization, Guidance, structure,

learning to new representation, or visual and verbal
context and higher architecture for representations,
order thinking skills – organizing new modeling of higher
may require mastery learning order thinking
or automatization of
prior learning
 Bridges
Bridges from lower to HOT are created by
interweaving thinking activities with content
through “elaborating the material, making
inferences beyond what is explicitly presented,
building adequate representations, analyzing and
constructing relationships”.
 Prerequisites
Content and Context
 Subject area
content(vocabulary,
structure, concept
definitions, procedural
knowledge, reasoning
pattern)
 Thinking terms, structures,
strategies, errors, fallacies
 Teaching strategies and
learning environment (safe,
motivating, supportive)
Lower Order Thinking Dispositions and Abilities
Skills
 Cognitive strategies  Attitudes, adaptiveness,
 Comprehension tolerance for risk,
 Concept classification flexibility, openness
 Discriminations  Cognitive styles (field
 Routine rule using dependence, locus of
 Simple analysis control, response rates)
 Simple application  Habits of mind
(persistence, self-
monitoring, self-reflection)
 Multiple intelligences
(linguistic-verbal, logical-
mathematical, spatial,
musical, bodily-kinesthetic,
interpersonal,
intrapersonal)
 In a student-centered environment, great expectations lead to greater
achievement.
Teachers who expect more of their students express more positive interactions;
■ smile more frequently;
■ use more eye contact;
■ have close proximity to students; provide clearer and more thorough
explanations;
■ give more enthusiastic instruction and follow-up questions;
■ require more complete and accurate answers; provide more prompting and
encouragement;
■ allow more time to answer questions; and
■ give more praise, less criticism, more complete feedback, and more
conceptual evaluations.
Teachers avoid comparing students with
each other. Constructive critical responses to
student work are meant to provide strategies
to overcome a student’s learning difficulty
 Specific Methods and Strategies to Enhance Higher
Order Thinking Skills
1. Instructional Communications
the teacher should provide students with clear instructions for assignments.
Factors to consider in lesson planning include :
■ organization of activities,
■ clarity of explanations,
■ modeling of thinking skills in action,
■ examples of applied thinking,
■ feedback on student thinking processes,
■ instructional alignment of objectives and activities, and
■ adaptations for diverse student needs.
Specific Methods and Strategies to Enhance Higher Order Thinking Skills

2. Scaffolding
Scaffolding involves giving students support
at the beginning of the lesson and then
gradually turning over the responsibility to the
students to operate on their own(only enough
support so that learners make progress on their
own).
Strategies to provide structural support:
1. Use scaffolding at the following times
a. During initial learning – use of variety of examples to
describe the thinking process
b. When needed – provide additional examples and
explanations
c. Use scaffolding – to build on student strengths and
accommodate weaknesses
2.Provide structured representations and discussions
of thinking tasks
a. Visually represent and organize problems in
concrete examples such as drawings, graphs, tables,
hierarchies
b. Demonstrate how to break up a thought problem
into convenient steps, using a number of examples and
encouraging students to suggest additional examples.
c. Discuss examples of problems and solutions,
explaining the nature of problems in detail and relating
the worked out solutions to the problems
3. Provide opportunities for practice in solving
problems
a. Provide teacher-directed practice before independent
practice, spot-checking progress
b. Assign frequent short homework assignments that are
logical extensions of classroom work
c. Link practice in the content area to complex, real-life
situations
Questioning Strategies
1. Ask questions to all students – calling on volunteers as well as
non-volunteers
2. To stimulate curiosity or demand problem solving, ask
questions about paradoxes, dilemmas and novel problems and
approaches
3. Have students generate their own questions about topics
4. Start with lower order questions, then lead up to higher order
questions
5. Provide wait time after a question, because students differ in
the rate at which they respond
Assessment of Higher Order Thinking Skills

Assessment methods for measuring higher order thinking include

multiple-choice items, multiple choice items with justification,
constructed response items, performance tests, and portfolio.
Response formats for measuring HOTS
1. Selection (multiple choice, matching)
2. Generation (short answer, essay, performance)
3. explanation (giving reasons for selection or generation of a
response)
Multiple Choice Items

Ennis(1993) suggested that answer justification be

incorporated into the actual test. Subjects would be asked
to select correct responses and then provide written
justifications for their choices.
Killoran (1992) illustrated a variety of ways that multiple-
choice items can be used to assess both lower and higher
order thinking skills.
Standard multiple-choice items can be developed to measure:
1. recognition of important terms, persons, facts
2. comparisons and contrasts
3. cause and effect
4. generalizations
5. chronology
` 6. special item types such as fact and opinion
Data-based questions, including maps, tables,
outlines, cartoons, etc. can measure:
1) comprehension,
2) explanation,
3) conclusion or generalization, and
4) prediction
Performance Tests
Performance tests, including hands-on tasks (e.g.
laboratory problems), essays, short answer constructed-
response measures and portfolios, have been widely
recommended for measuring HOTS.

Portfolios
Portfolios are collections of students assignments and
projects (essays, performance tasks, etc.), which are gathered
over an extended period of time, usually one academic year.
Haladyana(1997) provided a template to aid teachers in designing an evaluation
portfolio. It should contain:
1) table of contents,
2) a provision for a reflective letter that allows a student to summarize one’s
successes, frustrations, insights, feelings, etc,
3) specific tasks to be accomplished and evaluated,
4) page limit,
5) extent of collaboration allowed with other students,
6) statement of the permissibility of editorial assistance,
7) an indication of whether or not an appendix containing preliminary drafts, etc.,
is required, and
8) grading criteria (scoring rubric) that make the student aware of how points
will be assigned to the various sections of the portfolio
How Region V performed in the 2017
NAT for Grade 6:
 Math (PS) Math (IL) Math (CT)

MPS 32.86 29.16 34.17

SD 21.81 16.85 19.59

HS 100 100 100

LS 0 0 0

Median 33.33 22.22 33.33

Total MPS (Natl) 36.15 31.46 36.64

Median 33.33 33.33 33.33

How Region V performed in the 2017 NAT for Grade 6:

The 21st Century skills measured in the 2017 NAT are the Problem
Solving (PS), Information Literacy (IL), AND Critical Thinking
(CT) skills that cut across the five major subject areas such as
English, Math, Science, Filipino and Araling Panlipunan. The 2017
NAT results is a baseline assessment data measuring the 21st Century
skills. Hence, comparing the results to the previous NAT results is
inappropriate. In addition, refrain from ranking the results, rather
focus on developing programs which can enhance the skills of our
learners.
REFLECTION
■ What are the characteristics of 21st Century Learners?
Why is it important for us teachers to be aware of these
set of skills?
■ How are we going to develop the skills that our 21 st
century learners truly need?
■ What particular activities for professional development
can we undergo to address what is truly necessary?
What are your realizations and learning
insights in this session?
Thank
You!