Higher Order Thinking Skills: Challenging All Students to Achieve (In A Nutshell Series)

In this Nutshell resource, the author presents an instructionalframework for the five Rs: relevance, richness, relatedness, rigor, and recursiveness. The book shows K–12 teachers how instruction based on the five Rs, across content areas, can develop critical thinking skills (classifying, comparing/contrasting, and analyzing) and creative thinking skills (inferring, predicting, and visualizing).

Explicit instruction in thinking skills must be a priority goal of all teachers. In this book, the author presents a framework of the five Rs: Relevancy, Richness, Relatedness, Rigor, and Recursiveness. The framework serves to illuminate instruction in critical and creative thinking skills for K-12 teachers across content areas.

Each chapter treats one category of thinking skills. A chapter begins with a brief anecdote that illustrates the category, then discusses the skill, presents relevant life questions, and concludes by examining chosen strategies for the three thinking levels.

With over thirty-five years of international consulting experience, Bruce Williams is noted for his expert group facilitation and his skills in planning and team building methodologies. His specialty is facilitating participative, interactive group workshops whether these are focused on strategic planning and consensus building or instructional methodologies for the classroom. Recently, his workshops on Brain Compatible Learning and School Change Facilitation have been popular. In addition, he frequently presents in the areas of cooperative learning, higher order thinking skills, and authentic assessment.

Bruce brings exceptional skills at dealing with diverse populations aided by his seven years of experience in Japan and Korea teaching English as a second language. His thirty-six years of experience in adult training have enabled him to be an invaluable resource in facilitating school change.

In addition to conference workshops in 2002 in Australia and New Zealand, he has been invited three times in the last two years to present workshops for teachers in Singapore. In April of 2004, Bruce was the keynote speaker for 400 principals and teachers in Beijing, People's Republic of China.