According to the revised Bloom’s taxonomy, the cognitive processes dimension is comprised of lower order thinking skills (categorized under remembering, understanding and application) and higher order thinking skills (categorized under analysis, evaluation and creation) (Heer, 2012). The higher order skills that teachers should encourage the most are differentiating objects based on certain criteria, making judgments and planning because these skills are commonly applied in everyday life, irrespective of the person’s interests or occupation.

In the video “Small Group Oral Language Sample for Early Childhood Education”, we can see a teacher encourage the skill of discriminating by asking children to put the objects either in the block-building area or art area. Moreover, she stimulates the skills of designing and hypothesizing by having the children suggest what they can do with these objects. The video “Morning Circle at Preschool”, shows the higher order skills of detecting and judging that children develop when tracking the weather report. The video “Technology in Early Childhood Education Classrooms” demonstrates how technology can be helpful in teaching children the skills of selecting, focusing, coordinating and monitoring.

Inquiry is the primary instrument that a teacher can use to encourage higher order thinking skills. It is well-known that children can learn more effectively during active interaction rather than passive learning, hence it is crucial to involve them in discussion with pre-planned and purposeful questions. While lower order thinking skills require convergent questions that suggest one correct answer, higher order thinking skills can be encouraged with more open-ended divergent questions that inspire critical thinking (Duron, Limbach & Waugh, 2006). For example, the teacher in the first video asks the students “What can you do with the block (the paper, the airplane and so forth)?” to let children design their own original activities. The teacher in the second video asks the question “How do you know is it cold or hot temperature?”, thus fostering children to justify their judgment instead of simply guessing the right answer.

In modern early childhood classrooms, the efficiency of learning can be significantly raised with technology, which enables teachers to prolong the attention span of their students and increase their motivation. The broad research has indicated that integrating technology in early childhood education allows children to be more successful in structural knowledge, problem solving and language skills (Couse & Chen, 2010). Large screens with rapidly moving pictures encourage students to be more attentive when they learn to focus on, select and integrate different objects, as well as in monitoring changes and explaining them.