In our Pinnacle experience today, we dealt with LoTi and Revised Bloom's Taxonomy. We really value the addition of the "create" as the top of the heirarchy. As we saw in our study of 21st century skills, providing students the opportunity to problem solve and create a product collaboratively is important to elicit those skills.
Shelley Wright, posting on the PLP Network, writes about a completely different approach to Bloom's in light of that very fact. She suggests that inverting the entire taxonomy would provide a much better experience for students. Read her post "Flipping Bloom's Taxonomy."
After reading her post, please leave a comment here. What is your reaction to her suggestion? She suggests a fairly specific project in which inverting Bloom's applies, can you think of any you might implement in your classroom? or perhaps situations in which in often would not work?
Also, please check out another interesting Twitter find for Edutechalogy. This flash app makes suggestions based on the level of Bloom's in the Cognitive and Knowledge domains.
Shelley Wright makes an intriguing argument in "Flipping Blooms". Examples from her classroom seemed to be highly successful.
ReplyDeleteWhen applying to an elementary classroom I can see that flipping blooms would be beneficial in certain topics and not others. Overall, I do think it's subjective depending on what is being covered in the curriculum at that time.
I love the idea of flipping blooms. I think it makes sense to start from the "broad concept" such as creating something, and learning along to way to learn specifics. Do I think this would work for everything in my classroom? No. I think that it would work for different inquiry projects or it would work for creating and then critiquing something, but as far as learning certain topics in math, for example, I believe it could propose a problem. Overall, I believe that if it's possible to flip Blooms, it should be attempted because I think the benefits outweigh risks. I definitely would like to start with the creating/meta-cognition first and then teach the specifics, and I think it would help my students be more engaged as well.
ReplyDeleteMy reaction: I like the thought behind her idea. It makes sense to do the creating and evaluating first to make sure you prioritize including those activities in your lessons. If I change my way of thinking to plan my lessons that way, I know my kids will reach that higher order thinking.
ReplyDeleteHow I could use it: I think I could use this a lot in science and math, specifically in geometry or concepts where students have to observe and compare and just learn through playing.
When it wouldn't work: Being a kinder teacher, my job is to build a lot of the main foundations students need so they can create as they get older. I think especially with my EC kids or students who need a lot of help with the basics this may not work best for them, but definitely would work for my high achieving students.
In the instances of Shelley Wright's flipped lessons. Both of them made sense and in regards to the science experience for ionic bonds and conductivity. My science teacher in high school frequently had us conduct experiments and then taught us the central points to the lesson afterward. He used to tell us he wanted us to be able to contribute to his conversations.
ReplyDeleteI've attempted to do a few history projects this way (this past year we did the Harlem Renaissance) with the students researching components, putting together a product, and then going over the information for the unit. I liked the discussions better, I thought their finished products were better because they didn't have notes to pull from and really did conduct research in this instance.
With PLC's and Pacing Guides I don't know how successful a flipped Bloom's would be standard in Social Studies (especially since you wouldn't really want to cover the outcomes of a war without the basis for why those outcomes would emerge).
Flipping Bloom's Taxonomy can fit in well with the "I Can" Statements that Common Core is supposed to be developing as well.
http://cougarblues.blogspot.com/2012/06/flipping-rbt-model.html
ReplyDeleteI absolutely love her idea. I think in the perfect world and ideal classroom this idea would work for everything; every lesson, every plan, every idea. However, this is not the perfect world (as much as I am pleased with the direction things are going). I would love to try her idea in many lessons of mine. I do not think that it would work for every lesson within my classroom; however, I think there are countless ways to use it. I totally agree that students need to be creating, evaluating, and analyzing; but I feel in some cases it is important to build background first.
ReplyDeleteOne lesson I think this would work perfectly in for me, would be a lesson on the various types of maps. I would love to have students make a map of their choice first, then we can go through and talk about various forms of maps and their components. Then students could determine what they missed, what they added, where they were right, and where they were wrong. Students could also learn new maps to display their information they are conveying.
However, one lesson I feel would not work with this flipped Blooms is in Language Arts with our research papers. Within 6th grade, it is the first time ever for students to create and compose a research paper. Simply asking students to create one and giving them no background, information, understanding, etc. of the details in those types of papers...I feel would be chaos! Students would be full of questions and no way of beginning, things to look for, bibliographies, etc. I believe there would be entirely too much to tweek and "fix" from their original creation into their final paper that the idea of flipping Bloom's, for this lesson, would not be logical.
I am definitely interested and motivated to use the flipped Bloom's in as many lessons as possible, with some logic behind it! :)
I find the article "Flipping Blooms" by Shelley Wright very interesting and would like to see more examples using this concept. Autism research shows that play helps build creativity and language development. By giving up control and allowing students to "play" and "create" I feel that we can see much more growth. We need to be teaching our children to think outside of the box and the best way to do this is by allowing the the opportunity to create. I want to research more in depth on this subject and how it may work in my classroom.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Shelley Wright that the pyramid view of the original Bloom’s Taxonomy does encourage misconceptions: e.g., knowledge is a prerequisite to analyzing and evaluating. However, I disagree with her assessment of the the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (created by Lorin Anderson). The RBT is usually NOT portrayed as a pyramid. Anderson says that he chose a rectangle to discourage the previous “hierarchal” view that the pyramid encouraged. Anderson wanted educators to view the six revised cognitive processes as “cognitive thinking tools.” Sometimes you start with remembering, sometimes you start with applying, sometimes you start with creating, etc. Students need to have all six “cognitive tools” in their “tool box,” so that they can choose which tools are appropriate for different learning tasks.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that educators need to “flip” the traditional view of always starting with the lower-level cognitive processes. Always starting with the lower levels means that, if time runs out in a unit / course, some students may never receive the opportunity to use the higher-level processes...
I believe that this “flipping” method is effective during writing workshop—students create a work, and then they receive feedback to modify their drafts.
I am not in love with flipping Bloom's. I feel that students would become frustrated with all they had done wrong and the re-doing that would be necessary. In my opinion, students needs some structure to work from. As an English teacher, I love free writing, but my students usually do this with some basic rules in place. I feel that being told, step by step, that what they had done ,without knowledge of the basics, was not "right" would be extremely frustrating and de-constructive.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of flipping Bloom's, but still have the what if? questions in my head. I would like to try the grammar idea she has provided. The parts of speech are spiraled throughout many grades before my 7th grade. Still, there will be the questions of what's a noun? a verb? an interjection??? I think my students would like the idea of trying to figure it out, but at some point need guidance or they will flounder. Maybe a guided flipping would work for me.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! One of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is...begin with the end in mind. It makes sense to give students the big idea and then let them figure out the components and avenues about accomplishing the goal. These types of assignments provide opportunities for students to think, discuss, create repeatedly individually and in small groups. I like the flash app for Bloom's Taxonomy because it will be a helpful resource for me and my students. It can be a self-checking tool to ensure they are including specified types of knowledge. I like having these tools along with LoTi that provide guidelines for me to consider when creating lesson plans and activities.
ReplyDeleteI think that flipping RBT is exactly what will be happening in classrooms utilizing the new Investigation math units. Students will be exploring concepts and looking for patterns to come up with basic understandings of math. I can also see this discovery approach being used in Language Arts- with ie Poetry. Given various poems, students could look at format and look for patterns to see what they could discern from them. What insights could they glean before the teacher defines various poetry by rhyme and meter for them? I know an English teacher who allowed students to take on the personas of ANIMAL FARM. As students demonstrated their roles, the political climate in the classroom changed dramatically over the weeks of the unit. Instead of merely reading the book and providing an analysis, each student personally experienced the drama of surviving in such an environment. Will they remember this book? Absolutely. As well as all of the politics that went along with it. Whether we start at the top or bottom of Bloom's, it is important to consider that students need to be challenged to think, explore and respond in the classroom as in life, in a variety of ways.
ReplyDeleteWell, this one took a long time for me to figure out. Coming in to Pinnacle this year,I had already decided to partially flip my classroom. The struggle is with that eternal question: How? Shelley Wright explains it well and has given me new insight. I don't know that students love creativity, though. Oh, they love it when I am creative, but when they are challenged to think outside of the box, they say those two words that every teacher loathes..."I can't". Believe me. I have thought long and hard about this, and I am willing to try. Wright points out that the language arts arena is a great place to flip. We will see. Having students essentially create their own learning is exactly what we should be doing. I tell them each year that my job is not to teach them what to know, but to help them find ways to learn. The world is a library. All of the answers are there. You just have to figure out where to look.
ReplyDeleteFlipping the classroom is a new way of thinking for me as an educator. By revamping the way I approach teaching is necessary to meet the needs of our changing world and how we all see it. Students need the avenues to be creative and collaboration with fellow students. The toughest challenge will be the the students that will put up a wall and will not want to be creative. I feel that it will make me be an even more reflective teacher and look at it at a different viewpoint then I have thus far in my career as a teacher.
ReplyDeleteI have always been an outside of the box thinker. I believe my creativity has been a crucial element to my problem solving skills. I think we are on the right track.
ReplyDeletehttp://blperkins.blogspot.com/2012/07/flipped-classroom-could-work.html