Bloom and Marzano

My knowledge about Bloom's taxonomy and Marzano's research will affect my lesson planning in a big way. I can see the importance of implementing the new Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy as a way to prepare my students for the changing digital world. Although technology seems to be ingrained in our students at an increasingly younger age, classroom uses for these technologies still require teachers to prepare lessons to help students integrate technology into their learning as well. Blogs and Wikis seem to me to be perfect resources to help my third graders adapt to these changes. Marzano’s nine strategies will also help with this implementation because it allows teachers a way from which to base lessons that implement Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.  

Although I am not currently implementing most these concepts, I will begin right away on developing a classroom blog to share important events in my classroom. Since I can link to different pages, I think developing a classroom blog complete with news, daily assignments, and pictures will be a great start. From there, our class will develop other pages where they can conduct research or complete projects. One project I think will work very well will be a page that we can set up for our final Social Study project on raising awareness and holding a fundraiser for Heifer International. Blogging about how well the students are doing throughout as well as posting the fundraising level each week will allow me to use Marzano’s strategies in a productive way. I have even thought about having a year-end event to celebrate the students’ successes and using the blog as way to inform everyone involved about the event, and this will be another fantastic way to use one of Marzano’s strategies. We can then upload pictures of the entire project from start to finish as well as share strategies for the next class.

Since the Heifer International Project will be a showcased event, it will be easy to share this new information with my colleagues, so they can begin to enhance their teaching practice by using these strategies as well. I know some teachers will be loath to begin such a project, but I think once they see how seamless a blog will be when needing a specific place to share information, I know many of them will be more than willing to take the steps needed to get started. The time it takes to set up the blog will be time well spent.