In high schools across America, students are told to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and so on. But do students really understand what is being asked of them? Has anyone actually taken the time to explain to them what it means to analyze something? A student assigned to analyze a text may provide a combination of summary and opinion. These two elements, although important, do not contribute to the analysis. Analysis is a more exact process than simply being a critic. In An Introduction to Student Involved Assessment for Learning, Rick Stiggins (2012) takes the reader through a variety of reasoning methods including, but not limited to, analysis, synthesis, and evaluative reasoning. It helps the reader understand the importance of the cognitive processes behind education and how sometimes the means are more valuable than the ends. According to Stiggins (2012), analysis involves drawing inferences about a whole based on its parts. Stiggins (2012) illustrates analysis by comparing the analytical score of a student's work to the holistic score of a student's work. To evaluate an item holistically you need to look at the item as a whole. To give an analytical score to an article you need to look at its component parts (e.g. spelling, grammar, organization) and evaluate each part separately. Students can apply analytics in several ways. Stiggins (2012) provides a language arts example on page 60 of his textbook. Mention an assignment in which students describe the process they used when writing an essay. While this is an excellent example of how calculus can be used in the classroom, it does little to tell us how to teach students to analyze well. It is not enough to tell students to analyze; you need to help them understand how... in the middle of the paper... the desired mental processes. This is not an easy point to reach. At first it may seem that students are only making a dent in the service, but with practice and the example of teachers, students can make great strides in understanding not only what they learn but also how they learn. References Blooms Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (n.d.). Retrieved from http://teaching.uncc.edu/resources/best-practice-articles/goals-objectives/blooms-taxonomyGabler, Ina & Schroeder, M. (2003). Constructivist methods for the secondary classroom. Pearson Education Inc. Patsalides, L. (2011). Putting Bloom's new taxonomy into practice. Retrieved from http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/3648.aspxStiggins, R. (2012). An Introduction to Assessing Student Engagement for Learning (6th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.