Reflection:
"The curriculum should utilize relatively large quantities of data from a variety of sources to study a relatively small number of topics."
"The topics of episodes to be selected should be those with the greatest potential for encouraging thinking, or even controversy, about matters or fact, or about matters of historical interpretation of events in the past, or about alternative resolutions to social problems in the present."
––Extracted from Engle and Ochoa’s Guidelines for Social Studies Curriculum Development
Chapter 3 of Cantù's book discusses lesson and unit planning in the social studies classroom. For me, as a teacher in the modern digital age, it is imperative that I understand my classroom goals and objectives, have them aligned with state and national standards, and plan my lessons to include the three domains of learning: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. The author simplified these three domains as: head, hands, and heart.
At first, this sounded complex and difficult to understand, but reflecting at the end of the unit, it's really quite simple and natural. I would also define these domains as: what, how, and why. (What) For example, the term cognitive, or head, merely means that students are receiving and processing information, knowledge. (How) Cognitive is the lower ordered thinking, the first two tiers of Blooms Taxonomy, which is merely the receiving and understanding of information. Psychomotor, or hands, merely means that students get hands-on learning. (Why) Affective is the upper four tiers of Bloom's taxonomy concerned with higher ordered thinking such as: interests, values, emotions and biases. In this domain the question is: Why does this matter to me?
Andrew Church has revised Bloom's Taxonomy for the digital-age, and it is quite brilliant. I think his adaptation is practical, useful, and will help those who employ it to use technology in a way that moves beyond novelty into real meaningful learning. Many times I feel that technology in the classrooms is more of a gimmick, a way to try to capture students interest and respect. Yet, in my opinion if we seek to incorporate the educational research and strategies in the digital milieu, we will see technology used in such a way as to promote mastery learning and ensure that we advance students knowledge AND digital savvy. Instead of using technology to teach and learn the information and methods of the 20th century, we will be pushing our students into 21st century education.
Mind Maps. Why was this included in this chapter? It was interesting, and I really enjoyed Bach's cello suite by Yo Yo Ma, but I failed to make the connection. How do mind maps help me incorporate Bloom's Taxonomy, or write a dynamic lesson plan? To tie things together, let's return to my opening quotations and the topic of unit and lesson plans.
Cantù wrote in chapter 3, section 3, "A unit plan is a set of related lessons centered or clustered around a coherent theme/focus, and focused on all three learning domains: cognitive, process, and affective." On top of this I really resonate with Engle and Ochoa's guideline that, "curriculum should utilize relatively large quantities of data from a variety of sources to study a relatively small number of topics." I think we try to cover too much material in our history classes. In my class, I hope to narrow down what is necessary, add a bit more of what I find interesting, and then go deep. Dr. David McMullen drew an analogy in ETE 371 regarding summative assessments. He said that multiple choice and true/false questions are like skipping a rock across a pond to judge the width while essay questions are like dropping a rock into the pond to determine it's depth. I will tailor this analogy to unit and lesson planning: covering many topics in social studies is like skipping the stone, but focusing on several key events and going deep with primary sources and higher order thinking is like dropping the stone.
Big Question: In reality, how can I utilize technology in my unit/lesson plans to increase learning and higher order thinking without it becoming a distraction to students due to: advertisements, other links, and/or student inactivity?
Link: http://www.res.rcs.k12.tn.us/teachers/leonardl/blooms_pyramid.html
This is a great page; it lists different sites that demonstrates different levels of Blooms Taxonomy. Added bonus, merely clicking on the icon takes you to the site!
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