Copy / Paste by Peter Pappas

Five Ways to Engage Students and Other Audiences - Tips for Teachers and Presenters

I’ve been invited by West Clermont Local Schools (Cincinnati OH) to do an opening day presentation for secondary teachers. This is not the first time we’ve collaborated. Earlier this year,  I assisted them in this project - "How to Use Web 2.0 to Create On-line Professional Development." Looks like they have their PD act together!

The topic they assigned me for this week's presentation is “How to engage students in the 21st century classroom.” This post outlines the message I’ll take to West Clermont. While the primary audience for this post is teachers in the classroom, I think there's also a useful message for presenters who want to connect with their audience.

1. Remember that engagement is founded on choice: A task becomes engaging when you have an opportunity to make choices about content, process and product. For example here’s a diagram that shows how easy it is to transform a traditional writing assignment into a more engaging one.

See "First Day of School? Here's How to Get Students Thinking" for a student-centered way to kick off the school year.

 

2. Alter the traditional information flow: All the one-way broadcast information sources are losing audience - TV, record industry, teachers who lecture. I’ll bring my TurningPoint audience response system to give them space in the information stream. We’ll also capture “backchannel” dialog with a Wiffiti screen. More on using Wiffiti in presentations. [Note: Discussion was so lively - I didn't get a chance to use Wiffiti. A good problem!]

3. Thinking critically is more engaging than listening: Knowledge is only superficially transmitted by telling someone something. Students (and audiences) are engaged when you create learning environments that require them to apply their own analysis and evaluation to constructing meaning. Make it partial assembly required.

As a teacher, I was always turned off by trainers who weren’t using the strategies they were advocating. My workshops give the teachers a taste of how students will respond to the strategies in an authentic learning experience. As one teacher commented in her evaluation of my workshop, “Peter demonstrated his own method for rigor and relevance while teaching us, so we participated as our students would. The workshop was effective because he made us reflect on our classroom practice and our expectations of students. Then he supplied us with techniques and strategies to improve instruction.”

4. Relinquish responsibility for learning to the student (also this blog’s tagline): Students can develop their own iTunes genre scheme - what make you think they can't analyze, evaluate and create? Many teachers feel they’re competing (unsuccessfully) with technology for student attention. I see things differently. Students aren't engaged with technology because it lights up and beeps. They're engaged with technology because it puts them in charge of information they access, store, analyze and share. It gives them something they rarely get in the classroom - choice. The lesson revision I outline in point 1 is about control (not technology) in the classroom.

5. Always keep in mind that the essence of teaching (or presenting) is creating learning experiences that provoke reflection: Students who are simply asked to follow instruction have nothing to reflect upon. (The same is true for audiences who have been asked to do little more than listen). Students who are offered the opportunity to explore their own approaches and share them with their peers are well on their way to life-long learning. I'll bet "life-long learning" is in your school district mission statement - or is it vision statement? (I could never remember if I was on a mission or having visions). For more on reflection, see my series detailing my Taxonomy of Reflection. 

PS. Here’s my “handout” for the West Clermont workshop. Download Engagement-presentation (3MB pdf). It's a glimpse into my workshop - but I can't "hand" you the message. Remember, it’s about the experience (and reflection) not simply the content.

Teaching Continuity and Change: Crowdsourcing My Lesson Idea

I've been invited by the education department at the Smithsonian Institution to do a guest blog post for the museum’s blog using resources from Smithsonian’s History Explorer. I have an idea for a document based question (DBQ) that explores the historic perspective of continuity and change. I thought I’d “crowdsource” my idea to my readers for some feedback. 

Note: the post went live at the Smithsonian blog on Oct 4, 2010  

"Exploring continuity and change through the history of the bicycle"

Premise: The student get to be the historian

I think we often “over curate” the historic artifacts and documents we share with students. For more on that subject see my post:  "Essential Question: Who is the Teacher in Your Classroom?" I want to use documents that students could investigate without much background knowledge. Visual images offer the broadest access for students and I found a great collection of historic bicycles in the “Smithsonian Bicycle Collection.” My lesson would include images of about five bicycles with a brief description and key details. Text description would be limited to allow students to explore the images and draw their own conclusions. I think it makes sense to provide pdf download of historic bicycle the material. I’ve also considered displaying the content as a Prezi - what do you think?

Analytic approach: Exploring continuity and change

Students need experience using a variety of analytic approaches across the curriculum. Continuity and change is a perspective that has a central role in historic thinking. In this lesson, students would be asked to view a series of images of historic bicycles and develop a model for analyzing the features - the elements that changed (size of wheels, gears) and those that remained relatively constant (human powered, seated posture).

Multiple level of Bloom: Moving from low to high
Students would begin with the lower level comprehension skills - what am I looking at? But would quickly move to analysis - what design patterns do I see in bicycles? Evaluation - which are important to my model? And creating - can I develop a comparative model to share my learning?

Relevance: Authentic audience, variable product, peer and self-reflection
I think the target audience for this lesson is middle - high school. I will prompt the students to design a way to explain their model to 3rd graders. (someone other than the teacher that will require them to consider audience and purpose) I won’t provide a graphic organizer. That would mean mean that I, not the students did the comparing. I’d like to leave it opened ended for students to develop their own graphic or text model to express what they’ve learned. Student would be invited to develop different models of comparison and be offered the chance to compare and learn from each others conclusions.

Extensions: Thinking more about bicycles continuity, and change

• Consider how contemporary bicycles fit your continuity / chance model. Example - recumbent, mountain, fixed gear.
• Design a bike
• Apply the continuity / change model in another subject or discipline - fashion, architecture, musical styles, advertising, fictional characters... I could go on, but I hope you see the potential for learning.
• Technology extension - Student could also be invited to view the world's public photography archives at the Flickr Commons using a  search by "bicycle." They could help describe the photographs they discover by adding tags or leaving comments. The collection includes works from the Smithsonian and other leading international photographic archives.

Image:
A.S. Wieners with 1887 Rudge Racing bicycle
Smithsonian Institution, Negative #: 46-859

First Day of School? Here's How to Get Students Thinking

As a social studies high school teacher, I faced over 25 years of the first day of school. When I first began teaching, I did usual thing – working through the class list (“do you prefer Patrick, or Pat?), a dry recitation of the class rules, passing out the textbooks. Blah, blah, blah – think of the message it sent to my students.

As my teaching style evolved from the lecture / work sheet model into a more engaged learning environment, I redefined how I wanted to introduce my students to my course. I also came to understand that it was imperative that I get all my students to contribute a few comments to the class during those first few days. Very quickly classes learn which students are the talkers and non-talkers. Once those roles are locked in – it’s very difficult for student for break out of them.

So I didn't waste the opening week of school introducing the course – my students solved murder mysteries. I took simplified mysteries and split them into 25-30 clues, each on a single strip of paper. You can download one of the mysteries and a set of rules from my website.  I used a random count off to get the kids away from their buddies and into groups of 5-6 students. Each group got a complete set of clues for the mystery. Each student in the group got 4-5 clues that they could not pass around to the other students. They had to share the clues verbally in the group and that guaranteed that every student is a talker on day one.

While the students worked to solve the mystery – I concentrated on learning the student names. After I introduced the mystery, I bet them that by the end of the first class, I could go around the room and recite their names. While they worked on the mystery, I circulated getting to know students and their names. Another message – in this class, we’re all learners.

Over the next few days we would process their problem solving skills, group dynamics, differences between relevant and irrelevant information and introduce the idea of higher-order thinking like analysis, evaluation and creating. We might even have time to try another mystery to see if they got better.   ~ Originally posted August 27, 2008 ~

Photo credit: Flickr / walknboston

Student Reflection on Classroom Discussion and Problem Solving

I recently received an insightful comment to my post "Classroom Discussion Techniques that Work - Try This Hollywood Classroom Walkthrough" I thought it was worth reprinting the observation as a separate post.

First some background ... my original post used a video clip from "Stand and Deliver" to map the information flow in the traditional classroom. I also used the illustration below (from "Math Is Language Too: Talking and Writing in the Mathematics Classroom" by Phyllis Whitin) to demonstrate how students learn to  "do the math" for their teacher, rather than see math as an opportunity for peer discussion, problem solving or reflection.

Here's the comment to my post that I received from "Pjack." I'm glad to see that at least one student is reflecting on his progress as a learner. (for more on student reflection see my post on the Reflective Student) 

"The way math is taught is can be somewhat disheartening in many cases, as illustrated by that kid's drawing. As a high school student, and one who isn't that great with numbers (art kid here), one of my favorite classes I've ever taken, of all the most unlikely things, was summer school physics. The teacher did a brief lecture, gave us some formulas for how to calculate this and that, put us in groups of our choosing, had us figure out one problem per group in a collaborative fashion, and then present the answer to the class, whether it was right or wrong. The class would then give constructive feedback, and ask us questions, which we would work as a class to answer. The teacher sat at his desk the entire time, willing to offer help to those that asked but otherwise removed. The thing he repeated was, "What you put in to it you get out of it." Needless to say, it was an interesting experience, and one of the first times I did math collaboratively. Sadly, many of the students (soph/juniors in high school) made comments like, "He doesn't teach!" or were generally terrified of this responsibility. Really goes to show how little we feel prepared to take control over our own learning, at times. I notice this sort of teacher-dependency in some amount in almost every class."

 

Please Vote for Elementary School Engineers

A colleague and creative friend, Brian C Smith is currently in the running for an H P EdTech Innovators Award with an innovative proposal for "The I.D.E.A Room."  His project is based on his 4th-grade "Playful Inventors" workshop that Brian and his wife Wendy, (a STEM coach)  piloted in 2009. The project had great success integrating the arts, science, engineering, and technology in creative problem solving environment

Please take a moment to read their proposal
 and cast your vote here.
  

More on the project from Brian ...

Our faculty explored inquiry-based models of instruction and wanted to experiment with implementing a fully student-centered learning experience.  After analyzing data from NYS 4th grade test scores, problems under the physical science realm were identified as most troublesome.  Given their action research idea and the identified areas of weakness in science, a team of teachers designed the I.D.E.A Room program to provide students with opportunities to explore physical science concepts through the engineering design process while using technology as an integral component of their work. The Playful Inventors workshop, an after-school program implemented in the fall of 2009,  allowed students freedom of time to play, explore, design, test, and problem-solve.  Highlights of the success of the program include:

    •    Increased problem-solving strategies

    •    Reliance on cooperative learning

    •    Integration of the arts, science, engineering, and technology

    •    Creative uses of materials 

    •    Increased proficiency with technology, including computer programming

    •    Deeper understanding of key concepts of force and motion

 Our most important initiative is to continually shift instructional practices to become constructivist in nature using inquiry-based methods. We have discovered that in the classrooms where this is the norm, students are more self-directed in their learning, willing to take risks, creative in their approaches to problem solving, and demonstrate stronger team approaches to learning.  In the I.D.E.A Room, projects are personal, yet learning is both iterative and social.  The work by the teachers on the I.D.E.A. Room project has built the foundation for this instructional shift.  

Our second initiative is to increase the use of technology to facilitate learning for both students and teachers. Students participating in the pilot program were able to use a wide variety of technology tools for learning, collaboration, and creation of content.  Both the teachers and students in this group will be instrumental in assisting others to learn how technology can be transformative.

At the end-of-the-year I.D.E.A. Room Community Workshop, students will collaborate to create their multi-media presentation and practice their presentation skills. The Jr. Engineers will facilitate the hands-on stations as community members, including invited engineers from local industry experts, business owners, parents, and others try their hand at creating, designing and programming using the I.D.E.A. Room materials.

Top 100 Tech Tools for Teaching and Learning

The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies has assembled a useful survey of top tech tools for learning professionals. Jane Hart of the C4LPT compiled input from nearly 300 ed tech experts from around the globe who were asked to rank their "Top 10 Tools for Learning in 2009." 

The Top 100: Full Survey Results

To get you started, here's the top 10 in order:

Twitter
Delicious
YouTube
Google Reader
Google Docs
Wordpress
Slideshare
Google Search
Audacity + Firefox (tied)

The majority of the top 100 are web-based and free - great news for educators in an era of scant educational funding. New the list in 2009 are two of my favorites  - Prezi (presentation software) and Wordle (word cloud generator). For ideas for on how I use these free web resources follow my links to Prezi | Wordle.

Note: The 2010 survey is being in progress.  All learning professionals are encouraged to share their Top 10 tools to help build it further. Submit here.  Kudos to Jane for conducting the survey.  (And thanks to @russeltarr  for his tweet pointing me to the survey.)

Follow the Twitter Backchannel at Cy-Fair's 2010 Leadership Conference

I'm presenting at Cyprus Fairbanks ISD's "Rigor, Relevance and Relationships Conference" near Houston Texas. (June 9-11). My keynote, "The Reflective Principal / the Reflective School," is based on my Taxonomy of Reflection. For more on my reflective model click here.  Here's a link to the Prezi tour of the Taxonomy of Reflection. I'm also giving  breakout sessions in Strategies for Summarizing and Comparing. For a sample of those strategies click here.

To follow the conference Twitter stream, I created this Wiffiti visualization based on the conference hashtag #RRRCF. Stop by my session and I'll have it running live. Click in the lower right corner of the visualizer to view it full screen 

Learning from Centuries of Play: Students Reenact Bruegel's "Children's Games"

I was perusing Edward Snow's "Inside Bruegel: The Play of Images in Childrens Games" and impressed with his de-construction of the painting. As a big fan of document based instruction, I got thinking about how much students could learn from a close reading of the work.  Link to painting.

After a search, I found that a group of Belgian students had researched and re-enacted Bruegel the Elder's "Children's Games" (1560) for a class project. I'm reposting it to inspire enterprising teachers and students to try their hand at a reenactment of this (or another work).

Johan Opsomer posted the reenactment in 2007 with the following description:

I developped a project with the children of our school. Each child had to choose a group and a figure. They had some tasks about their figure.  Fill in a 'friends-book' as the figure would do in the Middle ages. Discribe the game and making up the rules. Make a drawing book with the house, the family and the clothes of the figure. Telling the life-story, make a cookbook, a family-tree, etc etc, depending of the age of each of our students. It was a great project and we even were in national newspaper with the project and the picture.

 

Seeing American History Through the Artist's Eye: A Teaching and Learning Resource

The Education department at the University of Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery has just launched a new web feature which pairs works of art with teaching strategies.  

Their new teaching / learning site, Seeing America,  documents the Gallery's outstanding collection of American Art through 82 works and their connections to American history, culture, literature and politics.

The accompanying Classroom Guide integrates background information on the art, the artist and America with visual literacy classroom activities. Lesson plans and resources are readable online and available as downloadable pdfs. 

Download a pdf sample Context and Classroom Activities for
 Thomas Hart Benton’s Boomtown. (above)

After you've had a chance to view the site leave a comment with your responses. I'll pass them along to my friends at the Education department.  

*****

If your interested in world art, take a look at my blog post "Picturing the Story - An Interdisciplinary Approach to Culture, Environment, Language, and Learning."  I served as an advisor to the Education department's last teaching site - "Picturing the Story: Narrative Arts and the Stories They Tell." It uses world art from the permanent collection of the Memorial Art Gallery dating from 1500 BCE to the 20th Century. Each work has a story to tell, either visually through imagery and symbol, or indirectly through custom and ritual. The stories reflect sacred beliefs, folk traditions, common human experiences, or unique cultural practices. 

How to Use Web 2.0 to Create On-line Professional Development

As a former assistant superintendent for instruction one of my responsibilities was organizing the district workshop days. It was valuable time - the entire faculty and staff was available - but also a challenge to develop programs that delivered meaningful PD that were also easy to manage and cost effective. Recently I received an email that introduced me to how one district is leveraging free technology to move their PD day to an online environment.

The email said ... "I'm @steelepierce on Twitter, following you, and also following your Copy/Paste blog.  Would you be available and willing to have a telephone conversation, preferably Skype, with our Teaching & Learning Department?  Topics: 1) our using your ideas on summarizing and notetaking for a professional learning online "workshop" we're creating for our staff (550 teachers!) and 2) your coming to work with our teachers in August 2010. Thanks for your consideration. Looking forward to hearing from you"

It sounded interesting, so I Skyped with the TLC at West Clermont Local Schools - M.E. Steele-Pierce, Cheryl Turner and Tanny McGregor. They developed a PD module based, in part, on my blog post, "How to Teach Summarizing Skills." I shared my input via Skype and also by recording comments into the training module. They built the lesson using Voicethread and delivered it online to faculty across the district during their recent Professional Learning Day. In addition they used Wallwisher (at end of this post) to gather teacher reflections.

 Click to view the training module. Advance or return using arrows. Click thumbnails to see all slides. Use mouse to zoom in / out of slides.

These are challenging times for school districts - and relentless budget cuts add to the challenges. The team at West Clermont shows us how the innovative use of free tech tools can provide PD that is cost effective, builds local capacity, and models the instructional practice we want to see in the classroom. 

For more ideas on how to develop quality PD, see my post "15 Essential Questions for the Successful Staff Developer." For information on learning strategies for the classroom, see my post "18 Literacy Strategies for Struggling Readers - Defining, Summarizing and Comparing"

Looking at Student Work: Teacher Led Professional Development

For the last few years, I've been working with a high school that serves a population of  high-poverty, urban students. In my previous visits we have looked at strategies to get students to function at higher levels of thinking (rigor) and with more responsibility for their learning (relevance) in a workshop setting, make-take sessions, and in classroom walkthroughs. The centerpiece of our third series of sessions is looking at student work. I met with teachers over three days in groups of 5-6 in 2 hour sessions. A rotating pool of subs covered classes. Some groups were structured by content area, others were interdisciplinary. Both configurations gave us interesting perspectives to review samples of student work and use them as a springboard for  collegial  discussion. Most importantly, teachers supported each other in school-embedded professional development.

Teachers were asked to bring two assignments with at least two samples of student work for each task. When possible, teachers brought in copies of the material to share among the team. Many brought writing samples or other assignments that offered students some freedom in how they approach the task. Extended responses or assignments that required students to explain their thinking led to the most rich discussions. Since the school has a major CTE component, some teacher brought in manufacturing projects. 

The process

Each teacher began by giving a brief background to their artifacts  - course, students, context of the assignment. We then spent about 45 minutes individually reviewing the sample assignments / responses. Teachers were supplied with sticky notes to make observations on the student work. This provide useful feedback to the originating teacher. Many teachers shared their impression verbally via informal side conversations.

I then guided teachers a discussion using four levels of prompts  We kept our conversations focused on the evidence found  in student work – rather than specific students or teachers.

Level 1: The Details: What details do you see in the student work – voice, content, organization, vocabulary, mechanics? 

Level 2: The Student's Perspective: Looking at the work from the student perspective – what was the student working on? What were they trying to do? What level of thinking were they using? What choices were they making about content, process, product, or evaluation? How much responsibility do they take for - what they learn, the process they use, and how they evaluate it?

Level 3: Patterns and Conclusions: Do you see any patterns across the samples of student work? Did you see anything that was surprising? What did you learn about how a student thinks and learns? 

Level 4: What's Next? What new perspectives did you learn from your colleagues? What questions about teaching and learning did looking at student work raise for you? As a result of looking at student work, are there things you would like to try in your classroom to increase rigor, increase relevance, promote reflection?

Teacher Responses

Teachers were also provided with written version of the prompts so that they could write their feedback. Here are some of the comments / questions raised by teachers. For more on how I used my iPhone Dragon Dictation program to gather comments click here.

• Choice is motivation!
  
• I need to devote more time to students reading and evaluating each others work.
• We need more sessions like this one. It's great to hear different perspectives on the same groups of students.
• Am I making my expectations clear? Can they see the value in the assignments?
• I'd like to add a student reflection every each day.
• I'm seeing new ways of looking at / evaluating student work.
• When students create for themselves, they see greater value in their work.
• I've got ideas how to make learning more independent, interactive - I want to stress more project, inquiry based instruction.
• We need to reinforce the idea of more “open” solutions to projects and assignments.
• Students are accustomed to answering questions that require memorization of facts and formulas, but the work that reflected student understanding used higher-level questions and left room for student interpretations.  
• Incorporating reflection into answers reinforces the fundamental concepts
• This session helps us develop consistent expectations throughout the school
• This is a great model for sharing - must be efficient and concise like this so teachers are willing to participate.
• What are we expecting our students to know and be able to do in preparation for the global society?

The National School Reform Faculty has many resources for looking at student work that helped me in developing my process and questions. Thanks! Additional kudos to dear friend and colleague, Patricia Martin for helping me to frame the workshop. 

Shouldn't Staff Development Model What We Want to See in the Classroom?

Recently I was asked to return to work with a group of high school teachers who were in their first year of transition to teaching in a block schedule. During my first training visit with them 6 months ago, my goal was to give the teachers the experience of utilizing a variety of learning situations of varying lengths. I wanted them to see the learning strategies in action, but I wanted them to leave with more than just teaching ideas. I hoped to provoke their ongoing reflection on what happens when students have more time to take ownership of the content, process and evaluation of their learning.

So when I was asked to conduct small group (with 6-10 participants) follow up discussion groups with the same teachers, I thought the best approach was to model it in a typical block format with three different activities that demonstrated real-time transitions in an 80 minute block. For more on my approach to professional development see my post: "A Guide to Designing Effective Professional Development: 15 Essential Questions for the Successful Staff Developer"   

I choose activities which would facilitate our discussion and feedback on how "teaching in the block was going." But I also wanted to use activities which teachers could easily adapt for use with their student in a variety of classrooms. The teachers were first asked to participate in the activity to gather feedback and then to reflect as observers on ways they could use the activity with their classes. 

Here's the three activities / prompts I used:

1. We opened with a "Brainstorm-Group-Label" activity. The prompt I gave them was to list all the thoughts that came to mind when they reflected on the first semester of teaching in a block. As you could imagine the results were illuminating and ran the gamut from strongly positive to negative. This activity helped us probe larger issues of what was / was not working in the transition to the block.

2. Our second activity was a "Fishbowl Discussion." A few participants volunteered to debate the statement "Student-centered instruction is great in theory, but in reality most students are not willing (or able) to take responsibility for their learning." Other teachers served as observers who were assigned the task of tracking the arguments they felt were most compelling. Then the "observers" were asked to synthesize their ratings and share back their assessment with the entire group. This brought our feedback discussion closer to exploring the underlying assumption about the efficacy of the student - centered approach that underlies a block instructional schedule.

 3. For our last activity, I gave a teacher volunteer a simple diagram. See sample diagram at left.  I asked them to instruct the rest of the group how to draw it. Download Communications exercise. They could not show the diagram to the group, nor look at the progress any group members were making in recreating the diagram. Then we shared my diagram and the group member's attempts to "copy" it. The exercise proved to be a bit frustrating for the volunteer and the rest of the group who had great difficulty getting it right. 

Why the last activity? In my mind it mimicked what the traditional classroom lecture does every day  - make the assumption that you can teach something by simply telling it to someone else. Thought I'd leave them with food for thought.

The Reflective Principal: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part IV)

Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! Principals (and instructional leaders) are often so caught up in the meeting the demands of the day, that they rarely have the luxury to muse on how things went. Self-assessment is clouded by the need to meet  competing demands from multiple stakeholders.

In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach.  It's posted in four installments:
1.  A Taxonomy of  Reflection  
2. The Reflective Student 
3. The Reflective Teacher
4. The Reflective Principal 

See my Prezi tour of the Taxonomy

It's very much a work in progress, and I invite your comments and suggestions. I'm especially interested in whether you think the parallel construction to Bloom holds up through each of the three examples - student, teacher, and principal. I think we have something to learn from each perspective.

4. The Reflective Principal

Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. (See installment 1 for more on the model) Assume that a principal (or instructional leader) looked back on an initiative (or program, decision, project, etc) they have just implemented. What sample questions might they ask themselves as they move from lower to higher order reflection? (Note: I'm not suggesting that all questions are asked after every initiative - feel free to pick a few that work for you.)

Bloom's Remembering: What did I do?
Principal Reflection: What role did I play in implementing this program? What role did others play? What steps did I take? Is the program now operational and being implemented? Was it completed on time? Are assessment measures in place?

Bloom's Understanding: What was important about what I did? Did I meet my goals?
Principal Reflection: What are the the major components of the program?  How do they connect with building / district goals? Is the program in compliance with federal / state / local mandates? Will it satisfy relevant contracts? Is it within budget? Is the program meeting it's stated goals? 

Bloom's Application: When did I do this before? Where could I use this again?
Principal Reflection: Did I utilize lessons learned earlier in my career? Did I build on the approaches used in previous initiatives? Will the same organizational framework or plan for implementation meet the needs of another program or project? How could my interaction with one stakeholder group be modified for use with others?

Bloom's Analysis: Do I see any patterns or relationships in what I did?
Principal Reflection: Were the implementation strategies I used effective for this situation? Do I see any patterns in how I approached the initiative - such as timetable, communications, input from stakeholders? Do I see patterns in my leadership style - for example do I over-promise, stall when I need to make a tough decision? What were the results of the approach I used - was it effective, or could I have eliminated or reorganized steps? 

Bloom's Evaluation: How well did I do? What worked? What do I need to improve?
Principal Reflection: What are we doing and is it important?  Does the data show that some aspects of the program are more effective than others? What corrective measures might we take? Were the needs of all stakeholders met? In a larger context, is the organization improving its capacity for improvement? Were some aspects of my leadership approach more effective than others? What have I learned about my strengths and my areas in need of improvement?  How am I progressing as a leader?

Bloom's Creation: What should I do next? What's my plan / design? 
Principal Reflection: What did I learn from this initiative and how would I incorporate the best aspects of my experience in the future? What changes would I make to correct areas in need of improvement? Given our experience with this project, how would I address our next challenge? Have I effectively helped our school forge a shared vision of teaching and learning? And has it served as the foundation of this plan? If this project will hold teachers more accountable for student performance,  how am I meeting my responsibilities to provide the inputs they need for success? How can I best use my strengths to improve? What steps should I take or resources should I use to meet my challenges? Is there training or networking that would help me meet my professional goals? What suggestions do I have for my stakeholders, supervisors or peers to foster greater collaboration? 

The Reflective Teacher: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part III)

Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! Teachers are often so caught up in the meeting the demands of the day, that they rarely have the luxury to muse on how things went. Moreover, teaching can be an isolating profession - one that dictates "custodial" time with students over "collaborative" time with peers. In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach.  It's posted in four installments:
1.  A Taxonomy of  Reflection
2. The Reflective Student 
3. The Reflective Teacher 
4. The Reflective Principal

 See my Prezi Tour of the Taxonomy

It's very much a work in progress, and I invite your comments and suggestions. I'm especially interested in whether you think the parallel construction to Bloom holds up through each of the three examples - student, teacher, and principal. I think we have something to learn from each perspective.

3. The Reflective Teacher

Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. (See installment 1 for more on the model). Assume that a teacher looked back on an lesson (or project, unit, course, etc) they have just taught. What sample questions might they ask themselves as they move from lower to higher order reflection? (Note: I'm not suggesting that all questions are asked after lesson - feel free to pick a few that work for you.)

Bloom's Remembering: What did I do?
Teacher Reflection: What was the lesson? Did it address all the content? Was it completed on time? How did students "score" on the assessment?

Bloom's Understanding: What was important about what I did? Did I meet my goals?
Teacher Reflection: Can I explain the major components of the lesson?  Do I understand how they connect with the previous / next unit of study? Where does this unit fit into the curriculum? What instructional strategies were used? Did I follow best practices and address the standards?

Bloom's Application: When did I do this before? Where could I use this again?
Teacher Reflection: Did I build on content, product or process from previous lessons? How does this lesson scaffold the learning for the next lesson? How could I adapt the instructional approach to another lesson? How could this lesson be modified for different learners?

Bloom's Analysis: Do I see any patterns or relationships in what I did?
Teacher Reflection: What background knowledge and skills did I assume students were bringing to the lesson? Were the instructional strategies I used the right ones for this assignment? Do I see any patterns in how I approached the lesson - such as pacing, grouping? Do I see patterns in my teaching style - for example do I comment after every student reply? What were the results of the approach I used - was it effective, or could I have eliminated or reorganized steps?

Bloom's Evaluation: How well did I do? What worked? What do I need to improve?
Teacher Reflection: What are we learning and is it important? Were my assumptions about student background knowledge and skills accurate? Were any elements of the lesson more effective than other elements? Did some aspects need improvement? Were the needs of all learners met? What levels of mastery did students reach?  What have I learned about my strengths and my areas in need of improvement?  How am I progressing as a teacher?

Bloom's Creation: What should I do next? What's my plan / design? 
Teacher Reflection: How would I incorporate the best aspects of this lesson in the future? What changes would I make to correct areas in need of improvement? How can I best use my strengths to improve? What steps should I take or resources should I use to meet my challenges? Is there training or networking that would help me to meet my professional goals? What suggestions do I have for our leadership or my peers to improve our learning environment? 

The Reflective Student: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part II)

Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! At best, students can narrate what they did, but have trouble thinking abstractly about their learning - patterns, connections and progress.

In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach.  It's posted in four installments:

1.  A Taxonomy of  Reflection  
2. The Reflective Student
3. The Reflective Teacher
4. The Reflective Principal 

See my Prezi tour of the Taxonomy

It's very much a work in progress, and I invite your comments and suggestions. I'm especially interested in whether you think the parallel construction to Bloom holds up through each of the three examples - student, teacher, and principals. I think all have something to learn from each perspective.

2. The Reflective Student

Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. (See installment 1 for more on the model). Assume that a student looked back on a project or assignment they had completed. What sample questions might they ask themselves as they move from lower to higher order reflection? (Note: I'm not suggesting that all questions are asked after every project - feel free to pick a few that work for you.)

Bloom's Remembering: What did I do?
Student Reflection: What was the assignment? When was it due? Did I get it turned in on time?

Bloom's Understanding: What was important about what I did? Did I meet my goals?
Student Reflection: Do I understand the parts of the assignment and how they connect? Did my response completely cover all parts of the assignment? Do I see where this fits in with what we are studying? 

Bloom's Application: When did I do this before? Where could I use this again?
Student Reflection: How was this assignment similar to other assignments? (in this course or others). Do I see connections in either content, product or process? Are there ways to adapt it to other assignments? Where could I use this (content, product or process) my life?

Bloom's Analysis: Do I see any patterns or relationships in what I did?
Student Reflection: Were the strategies, skills and procedures I used effective for this assignment? Do I see any patterns in how I approached my work - such as  following an outline, keeping to deadlines? What were the results of the approach I used - was it efficient, or could I have eliminated or reorganized steps?

Bloom's Evaluation: How well did I do? What worked? What do I need to improve?
Student Reflection: What are we learning and is it important? Did I do an effective job of communicating my learning to others? What have I learned about my strengths and my areas in need of improvement? How am I progressing as a learner?

Bloom's Creation: What should I do next? What's my plan / design? 
Student Reflection: How can I best use my strengths to improve? What steps should I take or resources should I use to meet my challenges? What suggestions do I have for my teacher or my peers to improve our learning environment? How can I adapt this content or skill to make a difference in my life?