EDTC 601 - Week 2 -Activity 5: Project - Blogging about Bloom and Marzano

Blogging about Bloom and Marzano

In this post I will discuss, ‘How will your knowledge about Bloom's taxonomy and Marzano's research affect your lesson planning? How could you improve or change them to be more effective?  How could you share your new information with your colleagues to possibly enhance their teaching practice? What is the most important information you would want to share ’  I am going to approach these questions from the direction of student engagement. In the past I have not considered these teaching strategies.  I simply considered what I wanted to teach
and proceeded in what I called a ‘common sense’ direction.  I would teach the kids the rules of the activity, which included the end goal, or what the kids call, ‘how do we win’.  Part of what I like about being a PE teacher is watching kids figure out a strategy for winning.  There is always a more and less productive way to achieve an end goal.  Many kids have the kind of brain that searches for the quickest way to accomplish a
task.  It is very entertaining and interesting to observe this process.  Blooms and Marzano have both clarified and named the different strategies that I have observed kids using through many years of teaching.  Some kids are able to identify when is a good time to ‘identify similarities and differences’ or use ‘cooperative learning’.   Having teachers use these strategies when dealing with all kids is very good because not all kids have the type of brain that leads them to these strategies
without our help.  And if we don’t require ‘all’ kids to use higher level thinking strategies, then some might not
ever get there.  In CSAP terms this is called – Depth of Knowledge- they need to not only know the basics about a
topic, they need to know how to use the knowledge to apply-analyze-synthesize-and create.  I will make sure my lesson plans require kids to question why, experiment with possibilities, evaluate their results, and make adjustments.  Being able to identify problems and come up with solutions is a lifelong skill that everybody needs. Before I started learning about these strategies at a more in-depth
level, I was using some, but not all.  I now see that I can go further and stretch my kids more.  I see this as a way to get the best I can out of all my kids.  I realize that they are
all not capable of the same levels of achievement, but they are all capable of giving me their absolute best, and I can raise the bar for each of them by focusing more on using these concepts.  I am in a position in my school where I interact with every student in the building.  This enables me to talk with any teacher I choose about any child I choose.  I can collaborate with teachers about strategies I am using that are successful with a particular student and I can ask for help from a teacher when I am not successful with a student.  The most important information to share is the fact that using these strategies helps
students to learn at the highest possible level and retain the knowledge.