Integrating Higher Order Thinking into a lesson.

Integrating Higher Order Thinking into
“Learning a Verb in Spanish”

In learning Spanish it is vitally important to pay attention to, memorize, practice and learn your verbs. “El verbo” is a fundamental building block for the Spanish language. Once learned you can describe action as well as the person performing the action (Gutin, J, 2007). My intent for this lesson is to introduce one of the verbs to be studied in a unit, have the students practice it, use it and in the end be able to apply in unison with the other items learned in the unit.
Preparation for this lesson and all lessons of the unit starte on the first day of the unit:
Grammar: Each student is given a “Grammar Item Sheet” which breaks down the progress day by day for the class. They know from the first day when they expect a quiz, when they need to hand in homework, and when the test is to be given. Any project that will be introduced during the unit will have a notation and dates assigned to it.
Vocabulary: Every unit starts with a review of the video for the unit, where they will be introduced to the vocabulary words and their sound. Now I give them their Quizlet work sheet, which is a homework assignment, based on the vocabulary for the unit. Quizlet is vocabulary help that I have used this semester in an attempt to get them to study their vocabulary. They do this at home recording their progress on the sheet given. The terminating activity for the Quizlet sheet is taking a vocabulary quiz on Lab day.
Subject Pronouns: The relationship of the subject pronouns and the Verbs is pretty much understood at this point in the semester.
Conjugations: How the verb forms are created is understood and the conjugating of some irregular verbs as well as the basic regular verbs is understood.
The lesson starts with the students being assigned to summarize the Grammar Item in the book or the work sheet that is given. They are also given several exercises to do that support the new learning. As they begin doing the assignment I go over the grammar item rules and work out some examples for the exercises.
Next I assign students to put up the answers on the board. As they finish getting their work on the board I will go over the answers and have a different student translate.
After the exercises we get ready for the triangle game, which reinforces the learning of the conjugation forms of the verb.
The next activity is the group conversation. Each group needs to create a dialogue or conversation using the grammar items of the unit. Everybody needs to participate, each person having at least two sentences with the appropriate vocabulary.
The culminating activity to the conversation is of course the presentation of the work. Again everybody participates with their two sentences using appropriate vocabulary and grammar.
Finally as time allows we pack up and do a summation exercise which is a simple vocabulary grilling by one of the students. I first grill them on the verb we have learned about and then we continue with the other words off the vocabulary until the bell rings. They are all aware that a quiz on this verb will be taken the next day.

Now, how do I integrate this first into Blooms Revised Taxonomy and better yet into Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy?
1. I have been putting all the initial documents on one file. It would suit the student and parent better to have them separated.
2. Quizlet vocabulary has been one big set from 50-70 words. I will experiment with smaller sets that are more directed to each lesson.
3. I did not make sign-up for Quizlet mandatory mainly due to schools system prohibitions to outside websites. This is passing and I will seek authorization so students can sign-up to Quizlet and I can see the work they do.
4. We recently joined Edmodo as a system and it says quizzing is one of its applications. If this capability is anything close to Quia.com I should be able to get students to produce much more creative work which I can assess and give feedback online.
5. I need an application that will allow them to add their voices to their text. I have looked at VoiceThreads however it is prohibitive due to budget. There was an interesting post by a teacher on the World Language group of Edmodo; she was telling how she used Google Voice to have students get assessed for conversation and dialogues.

References

Gutin, J, (2007), Everything Learning Spanish Book: Speak, Write and Understand Basic Spanish in no Time, Adams Media, Avon, MA, P 56.