Bloom and Marzano

As a fairly new teacher, I very recently went through my teacher certification program. It seems that Bloom and Marzano are the only people who have impacted education, because they are always the focus of every education class I have taken. Since I have been aware of the strategies around both, I have been implementing them in my classroom for several years now. I feel that I do a good job of incorporating Marzano’s strategies. When I plan my daily lessons, I make sure to vary the strategies I use to avoid over using one or the other. However, on a daily basis I do implement setting objectives and providing feedback. Each day, students are required to record the daily objective and rate their proficiency on meeting the objective, both before and after the lesson. I think it is important that my students know the purpose of each lesson and why were doing it. Since starting the daily objective journals, students never ask, “Why do we have to do this?” Now they actively participate because they understand the set purpose.

When planning lessons, I also pay attention to the various levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, especially when it comes to differentiating my lessons for the various needs in my classroom. I make sure that I plan activities at all levels for all of my students, but some of the higher level activities need to be modified or broken into smaller chunks so that all students can be successful. Although, I have been conscious of Bloom’s for awhile, I was never really aware of the digital additions to the taxonomy. Now that I am aware, it is my goal to work on incorporating these skills into the curriculum. I continue to look for innovative ways of incorporating technology into the classroom, and the Digital bloom’s taxonomy will provide a focus for these types of activities and skills.

Overall, the staff I work with is pretty proficient with incorporating Marzano and Bloom’s because we are an AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) school. Many of the AVID strategies that we use overlap with Marzano and Bloom. I will, however, look for opportunites to collaborate with my peers on incorporating the Digital Bloom’s additions. The Wellington Middle School staff are all committed to incorporating technology into the classroom, so I know they will be excited about the new Bloom’s. Our media specialist will also be a great resource for getting some of the technology pieces up and running.