Overview of underlying concepts

ICT is a powerful means of developing pupils' higher thinking skills. In KS2 pupils may meet a ’glass ceiling’ of assessment (‘most pupils can‘) at level 4/5. This resource explores how teachers can find evidence of pupils working beyond level 5 – how classroom activities might be adjusted to encourage higher thinking and how to obtain evidence where pupils may not be able to fully articulate a description of what they are doing and why. Simple examples might be as follows: Is a pupil teaching others (including the teacher) how to use and apply a piece of software? Does the pupil use ICT creatively outside of school and is this captured as part of assessment?

Why do we use questioning?

• To interest, engage and challenge pupils.
• To check on prior knowledge.
• To stimulate recall and use of existing knowledge in order to create new understanding and meaning.
• To focus on key concepts and issues.
• To extend thinking from the concrete and factual to the analytical and evaluative.
• Applied to ICT it can establish how well pupils understand the context of what they are doing: if they can analyse needs, data and required outcomes, design, refine and demonstrate a solution and evaluate it against the original context/analysis.

For deeper learning and development of higher thinking skills, questioning is to lead pupils through a planned sequence which progressively establishes key understandings, to promote reasoning, problem solving, evaluation and the formulation of hypotheses and to promote pupils' thinking about what they have learned.

There are various classifications of higher order thinking skills. Bloom's Taxonomy is probably the best known.