Moving from “I Know” to “I Understand”: This Is Where Everything Happens.
Why the distinction between Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) and Lower-Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) transforms your teaching… and your assessments?
In our classrooms, all students “think.”
But how do they really think?
To design effective lessons, it is essential to understand two categories of cognitive processes: lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) and higher-order thinking skills (HOTS).
LOWER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS (LOTS)
These involve foundational skills necessary to begin learning, but primarily show what the student can do with already known content.
What they involve:
Memorizing
Identifying
Recognizing
Understanding simple information
Applying a previously learned rule
Examples of tasks:
Recalling a definition
Finding explicit information in a text
Applying a taught procedure
Matching/classifying/completing
These tasks are essential for building a foundation, but they do not guarantee a deep understanding.
HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS (HOTS)
Here, the student must reason, connect ideas, justify, critique, design, and transfer knowledge.
These are the skills that indicate genuine understanding.
What they involve:
Analyzing
Comparing
Inferring
Evaluating
Arguing
Creating or modeling
Transferring a skill to a new situation
Examples of tasks:
Comparing two strategies and explaining which is more effective
Justifying an answer by explaining the reasoning
Evaluating the quality of an argument or solution
Imagining a hypothesis or a model
Applying a concept in a new context
These are the tasks that truly reveal what the student understands—and how they think.
HOW TO USE LOTS AND HOTS IN THE CLASSROOM
✔️ Start by securing the basics (LOTS), then move toward complexity (HOTS)Deep learning follows a progression: describe → explain → justify → evaluate → create.
✔️ Ask questions that activate reasoning
“How do you know that…?”
“Which strategy would be more effective? Why?”
“Can you find a counter-example?”
“What would happen if…?”
✔️ Make students’ thinking visibleUse concept maps, diagrams, written reflections, models—Anything that shows the path of thinking, not just the final answer.
IMPACT ON FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
Formative assessments should reveal where the student truly stands:
LOTS show:
✓ What the student can do in familiar situations
✗ But not whether they understand, transfer, or reason
HOTS reveal:
✓ How the student builds their reasoning
✓ Where obstacles arise (conceptual, linguistic, methodological)
✓ What you can adjust in your teaching right away
✓ The level of transfer and deep understanding
This is where progress becomes visible—and teaching becomes more focused and effective.
In summary
Lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) build the foundations. Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) build deep understanding. The greatest impact comes from using both purposefully and in balance.
❓ And you, in your classes, at what cognitive level are your students really thinking?
