Playtested game: Bloom's taxonomy

Instructions:

Take turns rolling the dice.  When you land on a square, uncover the word but don’t let your partner see it.  Write the word under the appropriate heading on your paper, but again, keep the paper secret.  The first one to get 15 words in the correct categories wins.  At any time, your partner can challenge you to prove that the last word you wrote is in the right category.  First, justify your decision orally.  If your partner still challenges, you may look at the list.  If you are correct, your partner misses the next turn.  If your partner is correct, you must give him/her the word.

The game board looked like this, but with each word covered by a little removable sticker.

Arrange	Defend	Dramatize	Give example(s)	Justify
Select	Paraphrase	Memorize	Use	Generate
Solve	Reorganize	Explain	Test	Identify
Classify	Define	Analyze	Modify	Discover
Criticize	Value	Design	Infer	Develop
Describe	Compare	Judge	Construct	Choose

http://www.clemson.edu/assessment/assessmentpractices/referencematerials/documents/Blooms%20Taxonomy%20Action%20Verbs.pdf

Knowledge	Comprehension	application	analysis	synthesis	evaluation

The comments on the game were:

• Players need a way to see where you are on the board and what words you've alreay played.
• Players need to understand the concept of "challenging" their partners
• Since the verbs can go in more than one category, make it clear that the final judgement rests with the list on the link above.

The purpose of the game, as I discovered while students were playing it, is not so much to find the "right" answer as to consider the meanings of the verbs in different activities.  Therefore, right after the game would be a good time to discuss task types that go with the different verbs, and see if there were any that might go under more than one heading and why. 
The main takeaway aim of the game is for teachers to realise that there are different ways to measure different types of knowledge, and that by using as many of these different verbs in their classroom instructions as possible, they will be tapping into a far wider array of possible types of activities than by relying on the book alone.

The serenity prayer for teachers

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference."
      American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr^[1] (1892–1971)

Most teachers I know are very good at the first two.

The problem is the third: knowing the difference between what you can change and what you can't.

Case in point: attitudes

"Group 3A is just lazy."
"Wow, level 2 works really well!"
"Maria is really smart."
"You always have to explain things 3 times to Mario, and even then he manages to misunderstand."

These are things you CAN change, and usually it starts with your attitude.  Maybe group 3A doesn't work the way you want them to for a reason.  Maybe your mistake with Mario is explaining thing: he might do better if he's left alone to figure them out for himself.

Case in point: class management

Have you ever seen, even if only on TV, classes where the teacher asks a question and all the kids raise their hands excitedly?  Is that what you think your class should look like? 

It won't and it shouldn't because learning is messy. 

Sometimes I open a book (well, my ipad) on the bus, read one sentence and it inspires a whole chain of thought.  By the time I come back to Earth, my ipad is asleep and I've reached my stop. 
Now, imagine the scene if I were in class:
Teacher: "What do you mean you've only read one sentence in the last 20 minutes?"
Me: "But I understood it REALLY well!"

This is one of the things you CAN'T change.  People learn in different ways at different times and we have to respect that.

March 8th

Happy Women's day!

I asked my students to participate in #CNNwomen tweetchat last Friday.  For every tweet they made, I pledged to donate $0.50 to CENIT, a center that helps street girls and their families in Quito, Ecuador.  So far we've only made $5, but I'll keep up the project.
The idea is to join an international conversation in English...which is the magic of twitter!

That said, I felt the tweetchat seemed to lack depth.  Sure, we all spent the hour affirming that we're all sisters and we have to stand together. 

Then I thought, why do we have to stand together?  Men disagree all the time.  You think Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. agreed on everything?  Isn't part of the definition of feminism that women have the right to their own opinion?  That's why we fought for the right to vote!

Of course, we never heard from the real casualties of sexism: the child brides, the sex slaves, the harrassment victims etc.  I'm sure they spend every minute of every day asking "where are MY sisters?"

Nor did we hear from the pioneers of feminism, those without whom the female success stories that tweeted on Friday wouldn't even exist: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull, Betty Friedan who are no longer with us; Gloria Steinem, even Malala who weren't able to join us.

Feminism, if it is to work, must be temporal, global, and include both genders and all ages. 
Am I a feminist?  YES.  Because the alternative is unthinkable.

Why homeschool?

Whenever I tell people I want to homeschool my daughter, they look at me like...well, like I'm out of my mind. 
"Why do you want to homeschool her?"  loosely translated seems to mean "There are places where they'll educate your daughter FOR you, so why take this on?"
Well, today I came up with the simplest answer.

"I don't want my daughter to have to raise her hand to ask permission to go to the bathroom.  Ever."

This is a huge statement because it sums up the whole idea that adults seem to have about controlling what children do, when they do it, what they learn, how long it should take them...and then blame the children when we realise that's impossible! 

Part of my job is to help aspiring teachers write their graduation thesis, and a lot of them want to prove that this or that intervention will help their students learn.  That's admirable and I support that wholeheartedly.  The problem I have is with the test-experiment-test system whereby they attempt to prove that because of the intervention the students have learned... and that just isn't how learning happens.  Teachers can open doors for students, or to use another metaphor, help them with the wiring, but no-one can actually turn the light on for someone else.  That has to happen in its own way in its own time.
Just like going to the bathroom.

Bloom's Taxonomy

This is a very interesting overview of Bloom's taxonomy: http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/bloom.html

It seems intuitive to understand that there are different levels of knowledge, so why do school systems get stuck on the bottom?

Making split-second decisions

The act of teaching is essentially instant decision-making which will either increase or decrease learning.

If you teach younger students, often your decisions will involve dealing with misbehaviour.  If a kid throws a paper airplane while you're giving your lesson, you need to decide right then what you will do about it.  Even if you decide not to do anything, that's still a decision; and make no mistake, everyone, including the perpetrator will learn from whatever you decide ("oh he's easy", "she's mean!")

If you teach older students, the decisions usually involve academic knowledge.  If a student asks you the meaning of a word in English, do you translate it? Ask him to look it up?  Ask everyone to look it up?  Why?  Again, there mnay be no right or wrong choice, but whatever you decide will impact the student's learning in some way.

The biggest challenge facing teachers, then, is the issue of TIME: you have to decide instantly.  Putting off a decision is a decision too. 

It may be that if we had more time to make decisions, we'd make better ones.

So how can we buy ourselves more time to decide?

How is a lesson like a game?

In a game there is a clear end point so you know if you're winning or losing. 
In a lesson you have goals or aims to achieve and you only know if you're achieving them if you know how to measure your students' progress. 
(This sounds obvious, but it isn't.  How many times do teachers ask "Do you understand?" and everybody says yes even if they haven't understood?)

In a game you have core mechanics which is what you're actually doing from moment to moment, whether it's kicking a ball to a teammate, moving a chess piece, or clicking a mouse. 
In a lesson you need to consider what the students are doing from moment to moment and how you know they're doing it right.  For example, what are the stduents doing if the teacher is talking at the board?  Most teachers would want to say the students are listening...but how do they know?  The students need to do something to prove they're listening, whether it's answering questions, taking notes or whatever.

Most teachers have an idea of their end point because they have to write it in their syllabus.  The mistake is that the end point is often not written from the students point of view.  For example, there is a difference between "we will do the grammar exercises on page 23" (teacher's aim) and "the students will attempt to correct common mistakes involving the past tense" (students' aim).

Few teachers have any idea of the core mechanics of their lesson, which is why the only way they know how well students have understood is by giving them a test.  Which they fail.  And the teachers wonder why.

When you plan your lessons, how do you think about your end points and your core mechanics?