Buehl elaborates on a topic that I am very familiar with at my high school concerning self-questioning taxonomy (Bloom's Taxonomy). I was introduced to the concept several summers ago while creating curriculum material for our World Civilization classes and we had to begin incorporating these ideas into our classes. "Bloom's Taxonomy offered us a blueprint for our instructional planning by helping us conceptualize how thinking at progressively more sophisticated levels might be integrated into our work with students." (Buehl, pp 180).
Bloom's Taxonomy allows us to create questions that promote deeper thinking and understanding of the material that we teach by having them question the reading--which is no easy task, especially if the students are not interested in the material. Hence, selecting and promoting relevant and meaningful material is crucial for success in this regard, which I had to find out the hard way in my classroom since this aspect was not given in our summer curriculum training. If we get students onboard with material that can interest them, then half of the battle is won since they are more likely to thinking more deeply about what they are learning. My first big leap this semester in this regard will be to have them read my personal financial money rules and have them question all fifteen rules since they have expressed critical interest in my money rules while teaching them basic economics in our ancient history units. It is my hope that since some students like to challenge teachers as a matter of fact, why not give them opportunity to challenge me in a constructive context that will get them to think more deeply and provide to them the ammunition to accomplish this.
Collaborative teamwork and think-pair-share and other forms of teamwork will help students begin to see the metacognitive thinking processes as well by working with their fellow apprentices. In my experience, team efforts will go a long way into building deeper frameworks of thinking as students can teach one another than if you tried to do this individually.
But there is also the problem that still persists that some students feel they cannot do the deeper levels of thinking because they believe they do not have the thinking capacity. That is why we also need to promote the idea of a growth mindset and teach them that they do not possess a fixed mindset but that their intelligence can grow and develop. But they have to be convinced of this if they are to get anywhere.
Thus, a teacher can incorporate Bloom's Taxonomy to his or her's heart content, but unless one thinks about other critical factors like relevancy and growth mindset and other important issues, you will not be able to get very far with your students in the daunting task of getting them to think more deeply and begin to question what they read. It takes time and practice and even some tears before you start saying some crucial results. Even now I am not fully satisfied with the results at times, and I must reflect constantly on what else I can do to tweak my methods. But in the end, it will be worth it as you see your students begin to grow into more capable thinkers.
Hey Christopher,
ReplyDeleteHow do you as a teacher develop the "growth mindset"? Because I have been thinking for a while now that if we can get students to understand that you have to be a novice before an amateur before a vetrean before an expert, that morale for learning would increase. I have not been a teacher yet so I do not know. How do you create this mindset? I think about your comment that teachers need to always be cognizant of relevance when teaching to students. That is so true. You know there are many ways to think critically and thus many ways to verbalize critical thoughts, but even the phrase "critical thinking" makes me think of gray and structure. It makes me think of discussing stories I could not relate to and perspectives I struggled to put myself in. So bringing relevance to the table seems crucial. Also, I would think students sometimes bring ideas to the table that have a relevance to them, but that a teacher may not readily see, in which case we need to be the questioners and ask for students to make connections.
Nice Carlin inclusion
Max
veteran*
DeleteChristopher,
ReplyDeleteI always appreciate reading perspective from an experienced teacher. You mention that some students don't feel they have the capacity to critically think. I feel I've always had this capacity, but would often get stuck in school because I was rarely asked to think deeply about something. Normally there was a straight answer or formula that got me to the answer, so it would throw me when I saw a question asking me to think deeply. I guess my question would be how do you convince a kid that they are capable of this? Is promoting deep thought in the classroom enough or does it sometimes take some one on one encouragement?
Thanks for your post, Christopher. I think you bring up an interesting point with regard to Buehl's assertion that teaching students how to ask the right questions will build "inquiring minds." I can see how the notion in and of itself leaves much to be desired as a teaching strategy - especially for someone who is actually designing a curriculum or lesson plan. Your point about selecting the appropriate texts illuminates that; the right questions will not matter if the text is too facile or too complex for students to find the answers.
ReplyDeleteI would add, however, that Buehl's specific strategies for HOW to teach inquiry are vital. The section on how to model inquiry as a teacher, particularly by "thinking out loud" seems particularly important. And Buehl does point out that both HOW and HOW OFTEN teachers model self-questioning can have a huge impact on whether students will be able to think like a disciplinary expert. Using Buehl's strategies - like tactical "frontloading" - can give you a lot of mileage, I think, when first exposing students to the mode of critical, metacognitive inquiry.
Hi Christopher,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post and seeing your perspective as an experienced educator. I think Bloom's taxonomy gives an effective structure and means of developing deeper meanings and understandings. Like you said, that is not always an easy task. But with this structure students are more able to efficiently question and reason with text.
Reading Buehl's chapter gives readers a sense that this structure is straight-forward and relatively simple. But in reality, I'm not sure if this is the case. The biggest question that looms, I think, is how exactly as instructors do we facilitate motivation for students to accomplish what we ask? The structure gives a means of how to facilitate learning, but motivation itself is harder to come by.
Hi Christopher,
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree that mindset is extremely important. If students do not think that they can excel or even be within the average then there is little way that these students can develop. It seems rather daunting to be trusted with the task of deepening students thinking when each student is different. I think that it is easy to be on the outside and say that as a teacher on will deepen thinking and relate to students but sometimes it seems as students do not even care. I was wondering how you came across the idea of sharing your personal financial rules with your students? I think that this is a great idea because as you said students like to disprove teachers and to kind of get a glimpse of their actual life outside of school. I also really like that it crosses disciplines and allows students to see that a task can be multidisciplinary. What other suggestions do you have?
Hi Christopher,
ReplyDeleteI agreed that we teachers need to think about students growth in the long run while making lesson plans. If we do not think about how students will digest and utilize information in the future because of we do not put it in that context then they may not understand that it can be in their best interest to sustain that growth after they leave out classroom. I also agree that we should in away put ourselves out there in terms of encouraging our students to challenge us. By doing that they will instill the information they develop into their minds for a long time and they also be building their own opinions and experience. Perhaps they may even try to teach their newly acquired and defended knowledge to their peers and those they interact with in their lives.
While reading your post I thought about our text analysis and the section where we think about how students might react. I found myself writing "students might not find this engaging" or "students might not be interested". To me there was a possibility that with every text I chose you would never really be able to satisfy every students interest. With this said, how difficult is it to engage students in relevant material?
ReplyDeleteAs far as students who believe that they are unable to think deeply, could it also be that because they feel this way they actively separate themselves from text in order to avoid the issue? I think the issue is that even though students are asked to think critically and deeply, the work they are asked to do is pretty surface level.
I was observing a classroom where they students are reading "Their Eyes Were Watching God". The students were tasked with comparing a porch and the interactions that happen on those home porches to something in the present time. The students all agreed that social media has replaced the porch, but did not mention to what capacity and how they are different. The teacher seemed ok with their response but I felt that students could have definitely gone into a deeper discussion.