Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Applied Learning

Whenever I teach a lesson, I always have in mind how I am going to assess my students during and at the end.  One way I like to do this is by asking questions that really make the students stop and think. 
When learning about the Bill of Rights, I made a worksheet that gave situations people may face and asked if it’s in their rights as citizens to do it.  If it is a right, they had to say what right it is.  Here are some examples:
Greg is at a movie theatre.  He wants a seat up front, but all the seats are taken.  He decides to shout “fire” which causes everyone to go running out.  There really wasn’t a fire.  Does he have the right to do this?
Tiffany is an active member of a local animal rescue shelter.   She gathers with other members to host a car washing fundraiser on the shelter’s property.  Does she have the right to do this?

Hopefully you can see how the students need to use higher level thinking to answer these questions.  First they need to think if it’s okay or not.  If it is, they then need to figure out why and what right they have that allows this action. 

I have a Blooms Taxonomy flipbook that I use often to help me decide on higher level questions.  It is very easy as a teacher to always use the lower level thinking.  Challenge your students!

This is a great site that I often print and pass out to help my parents ask higher level questions when reading together at home.  It uses Goldilocks as an example.

http://stewardess.inhatc.ac.kr/philoint/stewardess/data/philoint/culture/bloom's-taxonomy-reading-questions.htm

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