Thursday Thoughts January 23
Lately I have been talking to several staff members about the importance of living life to the fullest each and every day. Often we get so caught up in deadlines or what we have to do next that we miss the importance of now....today. This week I have shared a little information regarding life events that are going on with a couple of our staff members. However for every one that is mentioned, there are several more that are not. Please stop and take the time to ask someone how they are doing. Then take a few minutes to actually listen. You never know what a person is dealing with and today may be the very day that their life is forever changed. Thank you for being such a generous and caring staff. I know that when I share personal staff information with you, you can be trusted to show genuine concern and respect for their situation.
Staff Spotlight:
This week I would like to shine the spotlight on our Speech teachers, Janet McClung, Michelle Penn and Kristen Stultz. These ladies not only do a phenomenal job when working with individual students or small groups, but they also provide support and resources to our special education teachers. Many times, you can find any of these ladies working inside the classroom teacher's room and assisting as needed. As a general education teacher, you may have had the occassion to work with them if you have questions about a student's speech. I have had the opportunity to sit in IEP meetings with them and they are very positive, professional and knowledgeable about all things speech related. I appreciate their contribution to our special education team and our school overall. Ladies, thank you for ALL that you are doing for students.
4C's: Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking Skills
(many thanks to Leigh, Jennifer Serafin and English for constantly sending articles to share with all)
Foundations for Independent Thinking Look to Bloom and Marzano
By Liz Allen
Today’s classroom looks very different from classrooms of even fifteen years ago. Students entering the classroom today range from those with hundreds of hours of computer and Internet experience to those who have little or no access to technology. Some of our students read, write, and speak English fluently; others are second-language learners who primarily speak another language. How can we engage students with such a variety of skills and talents while providing them with important and relevant 21st–century skills like creativity and problem solving?
If we give students a traditional “choose an animal and write a report” assignment, we may have problems challenging or engaging them. Those students with computer experience may head to the Internet, copy and paste information from a couple of sources, print it out as their own, and move on. Our ELL students may not have the reading and writing expertise to really demonstrate their understanding.
Using the principles laid out by Marzano’s Nine Essential Instructional Strategies and Bloom’s Taxonomy as a foundation for structuring our assignments, we can empower all of our students to think creatively and independently. The suggestions and strategies in Bloom and Marzano are rich with verbs such as compare, design, predict, develop, incorporate, and evaluate, making project design easy. When students are given an assignment that encourages higher-level thinking, the opportunity for “data dumping” (copying and pasting) is almost nonexistent.
Back in the 1950s, Benjamin Bloom and colleagues developed a taxonomy that focuses on six levels of thinking. Revised in 2001, Bloom’s taxonomy provides a framework for examining the types of questions we provide our students and the thinking required to answer them. If we give tasks that draw from the four levels of higher-order thinking skills, we run into wonderful verbs like imagine, contrast, and create that help us transform the end product of our assignments to increase engagement, encourage student learning, and avoid data dumping.
In exploring research about effective teaching and learning, Bob Marzano and colleagues identified nine strategies aimed at increasing student achievement by fostering higher-level thinking skills. The first in this list of instructional strategies, identifying similarities and differences, easily lends itself to creative thinking. In this strategy, Marzano stresses the importance of the ability to break a concept into similar and dissimilar characteristics. If students are able to do so, it is likely they will also be able to solve complex problems by breaking them down into simpler parts.
Using Bloom and Marzano strategies does not require us to teach more content, just teach our content a little differently. Let’s look at some ways we can take what we already teach and transform the end result into a creative and unique learning opportunity for students.
Top–Ten List
Nearly every upper-elementary student is required to do a space report. Most often, the task is to choose a planet and write a report. Many of today’s students will “Google” their planets the night before the assignment is due, copy and paste a few facts, turn in the assignment, and call it a day. As an alternative, task students with creating a top–ten list of reasons why they would or would not like to live on their planets. While they can still go to the Web to complete their research, it is unlikely they will find (or will agree with!) someone else’s top ten reasons not to live on Jupiter.
This opportunity to be creative and thoughtful will help ensure they do not just copy and paste existing data and pushes them to state the facts in their own words and make connections to their own lives. This type of assignment can be used for reporting on places, people, events, animals, and more!
Five Senses
A five senses assignment is great for reporting on places or habitats. Rather than having students write an essay about a habitat, ask them to author a poem about it using their five senses. This requires students to do extensive research to determine what type of landforms, structures, or animals they might see; what types of agriculture they might taste; and so on. Using Pixie, students can support their poems with additional graphics, illustrations, and voice narration, enabling them to synthesize their research into a highly creative end product. Again, this type of assignment makes data dumping nearly impossible.
Associative Letter Report
Similar to an ABC-style book, an associative letter report asks students to take what they know about a topic and organize the information around a specific letter. For example, a student assigned the letter “B” and Rosa Parks might write “B is for Rosa Parks because she was brave when she would not budge from her seat.”
This assignment incorporates reference skills by necessitating the use of a thesaurus and encourages problem- solving skills, especially when students have a difficult time finding words to describe their topics. You can even introduce ideas like alliteration to more advanced students to give them additional flexibility with their wordplay.
We use associative letter reports for Black History Month and make sure that each letter of the alphabet is represented. When the project is completed, all of the pages are bound together into a creative and informative book.
If…But
The “If…But” report is an exercise in comparing and contrasting, which plays a key role in both the Bloom and Marzano frameworks. In this style report, students compare two topics, such as animals, states, or people. For example, if a student is comparing alligators and crocodiles, they might write, “If I was an alligator, I would eat meat and live in fresh water. I would also use my tail and webbed feet to help me swim. Also, I would have a U-shaped jaw. But, I would not have a V-shaped jaw because crocodiles have that.” Since the report is written in first-person, this assignment deters students from simply copying and pasting content.
I often provide specific templates to simplify the process. I ask students to begin with “If I were” or “If I visited” to describe their first topic or place. Then, I ask them to use “But I would not” to describe the second topic. To differentiate for different grades and ability levels, I simply change the number of sentences required.
Fact or Fiction
The “Fact or Fiction” report, requiring students to create their own book, is one of my favorite report methods. The front of each sheet of paper includes a “Fact or Fiction” heading, below which the student writes a statement about the topic being studied. On the back of that page, the heading is either “Fact” or “Fiction” depending on whether the statement was true or false. The student also includes an explanation of the answer. When the pages of this report are bound together as a book, the reader sees the first “Fact or Fiction” challenge. When they turn the page, they learn the answer and read the next question.
In Conclusion
Each of these projects, developed using ideas from Bloom and Marzano, provide an opportunity for higher-level thinking and avoid the problem of data dumping. They do not require us to teach new content—we can breathe new life into our curriculum just by changing the end product that students produce once we have taught the content. Students who are afforded a chance to demonstrate comprehension in a creative manner are far more likely to retain information than if they had they been required to summarize, match, or recall. As teachers, we have the ability to empower our students to strive for creativity. By stepping outside of the box and providing the right opportunities, we can foster a room full of independent thinkers!
Technology Tidbits: (If you have websites to share please email me and I will share with all)
Check out the following website:
www.pbslearningmedia.com
A wealth of resources for all grades levels (even preschool) including videos and lesson plans that you can sort by standards.
News & Notes (hot off the press today per our area superintendent)
Policy IEDA
Board indicates that the principal sets the location of recess, but the policy
does not set a temperature for when to stay inside. Students should not go out
if there is any weather advisory that indicates it is unsafe due to
temperature, wind chill, or another weather event. For cold weather, consider
keeping students in when the temperature drops below 40. However, this could
vary slightly either way depending on if it overcast or sunny with no
wind.
