USING THE REAL-LIFE CONTEXT IN SOCIAL AND NATURAL SCIENCE ITEMS IN GRADE 4: HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS ASPECT

The study examines the development of higher-order thinking skills of grade 4 students in the context of social and natural science and real-life. The review of scientific literature has defined what context-based learning is and highlighted the conditions for developing a higher order thinking skills. In the empirical part, according to the criteria selected in the course of the analysis of the scientific literature, the national achievement tasks of the social and natural science for grade 4 were analyzed. It has been determined that the context of the analyzed tasks is related to real-life situations. Tasks are close to the child with their content, and their context is brought closer to the child's living environment. There were no tasks that would involve a more global life context: political issues, international relationship, environmental issues, etc. It has been investigated that most of the students in grade 4 are required to analyze the situation and draw conclusions about it. More rarely applied argumentation skills and answers to complex quastions. There were no tasks focused on creating graphs, models or redefining submitted models.