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what is lower order thinking skills

Understanding Lower-Order Thinking Skills: Insights
Understanding Lower-Order Thinking Skills: Insights

Gain insights into lower-order thinking skills and their significance in learning and problem-solving processes. Expand your understanding.

Lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) form the building blocks necessary for advancing to higher-order thinking skills (HOTS).

Lower-order thinking skills encompass fundamental abilities individuals acquire during their developmental stages, including:

  • Observation

  • Memorization

  • Recollection

  • Comprehension

These skills are cultivated throughout the foundational stages of education.


A scientifically proven fact is “The more skillful you are at Lower Order thinking, the more capable you become at Higher Order Thinking”.

3 Levels of Lower-Order Thinking Skills

According to Bloom’s taxonomy of critical thinking, there are three levels within the Lower Order Thinking Skills category:

  • Recollection

  • Comprehension

  • Application

Level 1: Remembering - Assessing Your Ability to Recall Information

At this initial level, one's proficiency in:

Defining

Recalling

Recognizing

Comprehending

Identifying

And adopting selective approaches, are fundamental skills within the domain.

Moreover, it involves:

The capacity to identify problems.

Recalling past experiences to detect patterns or similarities.

Level 2: Understanding - Gauging Your Capacity to Explain Previous Perceptions

The understanding phase hinges on your capability to:

Explain

Describe

Paraphrase

Infer

Summarize

Classify

Compare data gathered from the preceding level.

Understanding is pivotal within Lower Order Thinking as it encapsulates a succinct grasp of the underlying problem.

Level 3: Applying – Implementing Inferences Drawn from Levels 1 and 2

This stage revolves around:

Solving

Operating

Executing

Choosing

Demonstrating ideas gleaned from earlier levels.

It entails devising concrete strategies to progress towards higher levels of critical thinking.

Key Insight:

Just as climbing a mountain begins at its foothills, developing strong critical thinking skills entails honing Lower Order Thinking Skills before advancing to Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS).