Higher Order (or Critical) Thinking

At Mathnasium, your intermediate to advanced math students are going to be challenged! They are are exposed to higher levels of thinking than others.

Higher order thinking, like most skills, can be learned; and with practice, a person's higher order thinking skill level can increase.

Higher order thinking is thinking on a level that is higher than memorizing facts or telling something back to someone exactly the way it was told to you. When a person memorizes and gives back the information without having to think about it, it’s called rote memory. That's because it's much like a robot; it does what it's programmed to do, but it doesn't think for itself.

Higher order thinking, or "HOT" for short, takes thinking to higher levels than restating the facts. HOT requires that something is done with the facts. One must understand them, infer from them, connect them to other facts and concepts, categorize them, manipulate them, put them together in new or novel ways, and apply them to seek new solutions to new problems.