Blogging about Bloom & Marzano

Blogging about Bloom & Marzano

Bloom’s Taxonomy and Marzano’s 9 instructional strategies outline best practice. When it comes to lesson planning, it is comfortable to only consider covering standards and/or implementing lessons that are fun. By boosting student achievement and engagement, both Bloom’s Taxonomy and Marzano’s research outline ways to satisfy pressures of standards and the desire to make learning fun. When lesson planning, I refer to an instructional planning tool that I created during a previous Instructional Technology course at Regis University. Because it serves as a menu of options, clearly identifying Marzano’s 9 instructional strategies, and technology tools that can meet students’ needs, it simplifies the task of remembering important components of a strong lesson.

While I do implement these components, I can improve my instruction by asking myself, “So what? Why am I doing ________?” If I cannot justify that the lesson relates to Marzano’s strategies and/or Bloom’s Taxonomy, I need to begin purging these activities and replacing them with more impactful learning experiences. Communicating with colleagues is one of the ways I reflect on my practice. I believe that a lot of this reflection and improvement of lessons can happen during dialogue of student learning engagements at weekly IB meetings. Sharing my plan and an overview of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Marzano’s 9 Instructional Strategies would help focus discussion on these best practices. My colleagues all bring knowledge and experience that can help support this research. By simply bringing this information out each time we discuss, we can ensure that we are indeed aligning our instruction to these educationally sound concepts.

Because our school is fortunate enough to have a lot of technology, it is being used on a regular basis. I believe that sometimes using technology gives the impression that we are using it to meet learning outcomes. From my experience and observations, technology has a tendency to replace traditional tools without making much of a difference on student achievement and that’s because we use it to satisfy the lower-level skills such as recognition and recall. I need to do more deliberate reflecting on when and how I use technology. If it is not transforming learning, does it really have a place in my classroom? And if it is not transforming, why not? By simply tweaking the way I structure assignments, I believe I can move from lower-level thinking skills to more critical thinking.

Link to Instructional Planning Tool:
http://agalvaninstructionaltechnology.pbworks.com/w/page/61552225/A...