1. Teaching for Understanding
Higher Order Skills (1)
Session 6

2. Reflective Questions
• What are higher order skills?
• What is Bloom’s taxonomy? What role does it
play in Curriculum for Excellence?
• Which skills are essential learning for 21st
century pupils? Why?
• Which HOS are integrated into my teaching?
• Which HOS skills do I use most? Why might
this be?

3. Learning Intention
• We are developing knowledge and
understanding of the higher order skills

4. Success Criteria
I can:
• Increase my knowledge of the higher order skills
• Understand how these skills can be organised using
taxonomies
• Identify and evaluate an example of these skills within
my practice

5. Impact
• Where is your understanding of the higher order
skills at the moment on a rating of 1 – 6?
• 1 being low understanding
• 6 being high understanding

6. Format :
• Welcome
• Whole group task – Round Robin, carousel to
share, video
• Individual task – Hand out 1
• Paired task – Bloom’s triangle – assign tasks to
HOS
• Group task – Handout 2 & discussion
• Action Plan

7. Pre-task
• None

8. Whole Group Task
• Use Round Robin, Team Relay or chosen
method to gather and record existing
understanding of HOS as notes and words on a
flip chart sheet
• Carousel or share whole group responses to
these records – record any questions the group
has
• View Kier Bloomer video 6.1– discuss which
aspects the group already had understanding of
and also which of their questions have been
answered

9. Individual Task
• Study Hand out 1 – Bloom’s and HOS taxonomies

10. Paired Task
• Use Bloom’s triangle activity to assign tasks to
HOS

11. Group Task
• Use Hand out 2 –
• What would emerging and advanced examples of this
look like? How much do I integrate Higher Order Skills
into my practice?
• Use as focus for paired interview of random partner to
respond to: Which HOS have you used in recent
lessons? How did it go?

12. Extension Task
• None

13. Teacher Action Plan
• Individuals record their own progress and define next
steps
• Monitor the extent of their use of HOS and note which
are used and which ones recur most often
• Consider using the Excellence group taxonomy at the
bottom of handout 1 – is this more or less useful to
you?

14. Evaluation
• Where is your understanding of higher order
skill taxonomies and their use now?
• Impact – rating 1 – 6