Tag: Essential questions

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A Taxonomy of Reflection: Critical Thinking For Students, Teachers, and Principals (Part 1)

Taxonomy of Reflection by Peter Pappas

My approach to staff development (and teaching) borrows from the thinking of Donald Finkel who believed that teaching should be thought of as “providing experience, provoking reflection.” He goes on to write,

… to reflectively experience is to make connections within the details of the work of the problem, to see it through the lens of abstraction or theory, to generate one’s own questions about it, to take more active and conscious control over understanding. ~ From Teaching With Your Mouth Shut

Over the last few years I’ve led many teachers and administrators on classroom walkthroughs designed to foster a collegial conversation about teaching and learning. The walkthroughs served as roving Socratic seminars and a catalyst for reflection. But 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. Likewise teachers and principals need encouragement and opportunities to think more reflectively about their craft.

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

Taxonomy of Reflection by Peter Pappas

Educator Larry Ferlazzo writes: “I think Peter Pappas’ Taxonomy of Student Reflection is a brilliant way of looking at developing higher-order thinking skills through a new “lens.” It makes Bloom’s Taxonomy much more relevant and engaging to students than so many other Bloom’s strategies that are out there. And it can be an invaluable and simple tool for formative assessment — something that any teacher can regularly use in their classroom that only takes a few minutes. My students and I have used it for the past three years, I’ve strongly recommended it in two books, and prominently highlight Peter’s work in my blog.”

A Taxonomy of Lower to Higher Order Reflection

Assume an individual has just completed a task. What types of questions might they use to reflect on the experience? How might those questions parallel Bloom’s Taxonomy?

Bloom’s Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from short- or long-term memory.
Reflection: What did I do?

Bloom’s Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, or graphic messages.
Reflection: What was important about what I did? Did I meet my goals?

Bloom’s Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure through executing, or implementing. Extending the procedure to a new setting.
Reflection: When did I do this before? Where could I use this again?

Bloom’s Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose.
Reflection: Do I see any patterns or relationships in what I did?

Bloom’s Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards.
Reflection: How well did I do? What worked? What do I need to improve?

Bloom’s Creating: Combining or reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure.
Reflection: What should I do next? What’s my plan / design?

~~~~~

Note: A thanks to dear friend and colleague Patricia Martin, for sharing her thoughts on this idea.

 Take my Prezi tour of the Taxonomy

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Homefront America – Engage Students with Document Based Essential Questions

Update: October 2012: While this lesson is still available as a pdf (see original post below) an expanded version – Why We Fight: WWII and the Art of Public Persuasion - is now available at iBookstore It includes 43 historic posters, 13 rare films, plus numerous communiqués, photographs and recordings. Plus student “stop and think” prompts based on CCSS skills. 

Ride-hitler Recently my post: Essential Question: Who is the Teacher in Your Classroom? drew a response from a teacher looking for a more scaffolded approach to document based instruction. Here’s my response …

Homefront America in WW II (PDF) is designed to improve content reading comprehension with an engaging array of source documents – including journals, maps, photos, posters, cartoons, historic data and artifacts. (One of the central goals of the Common Core standards).
I developed it to serve as a model for blending essential questions, higher order thinking and visual interpretation. I intentionally refrained from explaining the documents, to afford students the chance to do the work of historians. A variety of thinking exercises are imbedded in the lesson to support reading comprehension. Graphic organizers support differentiated activities to assist the students in extracting meaning from the documents.

Hopefully this lesson serves as a model of how to infuse support for literacy into the more typical educational goal of content mastery. But more importantly, it is designed to demonstrate how student engagement can be “powered” by an essential question. 

Instead of attempting to teach the American homefront experience during WWII via the memorization of historical facts (like “victory” gardens), this lesson approaches the same subject through a more timeless question “How did Americans change their lives to support the war effort?”

This essential question invites the students into the material as they draw from their life experience to construct a response. Guiding questions direct students to construct comparisons between the American experience in WWII and the Iraq / Afghanistan war. Moreover, since the events of September 11th, the very notion the “homefront” has been redefined by new perceptions of terrorism and homeland security. 

Instruction is not simply an act of telling, it should instead be centered around creating learning experiences that provoke student reflection. In this lesson, source documents and literacy strategies combine to simultaneously teach content and comprehension. But more importantly, an essential question serves as a springboard to engage students in a deeper reflection on the notion of sacrifice in the historical context and in their own lives.

Scaffolding questions include …

Pre Reading / Think Before You Start: 

Before you begin this lesson,think about and discuss in small groups the following questions: 

  • What resources are needed to wage a war? 
  • How could people on the home front help to supply these resources? 
  • What would you be willing to contribute to a war effort? 

Post Reading / The Question Today: 

Civilians have always been impacted by war and they are frequently called upon to contribute to national war efforts. Since the events of September 11, 2001, the United States has fought wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

  • How have Americans on the homefront contributed to the effort? What have they sacrificed?
  • How do those efforts compare with the home front in WWII? 
  • How did the attacks of September 11 change the nature of the “homefront?”
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Essential Questions in American History: “The Great Debates”

Essential Questions in American History_ “The Great Debates”

I developed this series as part of my work with Prentice-Hall supporting Daniel Boorstin’s A History of the United States.

Originally it was suggested that I develop lessons on questions such as “Should slavery be extended into the territories?” I argued that most of these issues had been answered, and that it would be more engaging to frame the debates around essential questions. Thus the typical question – “Should the Constitution be ratified?” became “How powerful should the national government be?” Anyone following the reauthorization of NCLB or the proposed health care legislation knows the enduing relevance of that question.

The Great Debates feature consists of twelve debates, one for every unit of the text. Each of these debates contains an introduction that states the topic of the debate, examines the background of this issue, provides information about both the readings and the debaters, and discusses the debate topic from a contemporary perspective. Units feature the conflicting viewpoints of two or more historical figures or organizations and a worksheet that helps students analyze the debate through a series of comprehension and critical thinking questions. Download all Great Debates here

Essential questions / debates include:

Debate  1: How Should Society Balance the Need for Tolerance with the Need to Protect Itself?
Debate  2: How Powerful Should the National Government Be?
Debate  3: Who Should Be Allowed to Vote?
Debate  4: Should Women Have Equal Treatment Under the Law?
Debate  5: How Should Americans Treat the Land?
Debate  6: Has Industrialization Produced More Benefits or More Problems for the Nation?
Debate  7: Should the United States Pursue a Foreign Policy of Isolationism or Interventionism?
Debate  8: What Should the Nation’s Immigration Policy Be?
Debate  9: To What Extent Is the Federal Government Responsible for the Welfare and Security of the Individual?
Debate 10: Is Civil Disobedience Ever Justified as a Method of Political Change?
Debate 11: What Are the Limits of a Free Press?
Debate 12: How Much Should the Nation Invest in Defense?

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School Board Leaders Reflect on Essential Questions and 21st Century Learning

new mexico
new mexico

Last week, I did a 90 minute keynote at the New Mexico School Board Association’s Leader’s Retreat. I used a “Socratic approach” and framed my talk around a series of themes and sample questions in a talk called “What Questions Should School Boards Be Asking about 21st Century Learning?” For details on my keynote theme, essential questions and blog reader comments click here.

The school board leaders had some interesting responses to my evaluation that inspired me with their willingness to rethink the landscape of teaching and learning. Here are my three evaluation prompts and some of their responses: 

What did you find to be most valuable from today’s workshop? 

  • Changing the mind set of traditional thinking in schools.
  • Giving kids a chance to be thinking and problem solving on their own – that’s relevance.
  • Looking at rigorous and relevant thinking skills in action.
  • Innovative uses of technology in the classroom.
  • Simply having students follow a process is not relevant learning.
  • The importance of rigorous thought and the creative thinking process.
  • It’s not enough to simply use technology – it needs to be used to support rigorous thinking.
  • These are questions we need to be asking ourselves, daily.
  • A multimedia presentation, with a participatory focus on the big picture of learning.
  • I liked the questions for board members format – will be easier to report back to my colleagues.
  • Education will need to change to reflect the information age.
  • You used the techniques you were teaching, which was very helpful.
  •  Eye opening and Thought-provoking.

What was a frustration you had today?

  • Public schools have a multitude of mandates which tie our hands.
  • How will we measure problem solving and creative thinking in the context of NCLB testing mandates?
  • The process of applying technology for learning moves more slowly than the technology developments themselves.
  • Legislators don’t understand these concepts.
  • This talk is best directed at teachers and administrators. Boards don’t want to be perceived as micro-managing educational methods.
  • Would have liked to spend more time doing TurningPoint surveys.
  • This information has been around for along time and little has changed.
  • How do we provoke the state and their testing regiment to reflect on the need for higher level thinking and not regurgitating?
  • How do we get this information to our legislators in away that makes them think?

How will today’s workshop impact your school board planning?

  • I will use some of these questions in discussions with our superintendent.
  • Bring our planning into the 21st century.
  • We need to think more about relevant 21st century skill development.
  • I do process agenda for our board work retreats and I’m more aware that we need to hold ourselves to rigorous analysis of the products of our district.
  • We need to think more about the “how” than the “what” of instruction. 
  • It will help me to formulate questions to ask myself and the district – are we 21st C ready?
  • Your example of toddlers categorizing means we need to ask more about higher-level thinking at lower grade levels.
  • We will continue to collaborate and refine our goals.
  • Ask better questions – demand better answers. That includes of ourselves and our planning process.
  • We need to prepare our students for a future of thinking, creating, exploring and collaborating.
  • How do we get this approach throughout the system, so students are not penalized for learning outside the established system?
  • We need to re-think our educational model and priorities.

Image credit: flickr/ Wolfgang Staudt

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What Questions Should School Boards Be Asking about 21st Century Learning?

What Questions Should School Boards Be Asking about 21st Century Learning_

Next week, I’m keynoting at the New Mexico School Board Association’s Leader’s Retreat. I plan to take a “Socratic approach” and frame my talk around a series of themes and sample questions that I think school boards should be asking in response challenges and opportunities of 21st century learning.

I wanted to offer readers the chance to offer their suggestions – via this blog’s comment or Twitter/edteck.

I plan to address three themes and pose some reflective questions for board members to consider.

Theme 1. Learning must engage student in rigorous thinking at higher levels of Bloom – analyzing, evaluating and creating. School boards should ask:

  • Does our school community recognize the difference between higher and lower order thinking?
  • Are students expected to just consume information, or are they asked to create something original that demonstrates their learning?
  • Is our district a creative problem-solving organization?
Answers: We cut music and art for remedial math. (Wrong!!!)
We recognize music and art are vehicles to teach math. (That’s better!)

Theme 2. Learning is relevant when the student understands how the information or skill has some application to their life, has an opportunity to figure out their own process rather than just learn “the facts,” and is given opportunities to reflect on their work and their progress as learners. School boards should ask …

  • Do our students get high grades for simply memorizing the review sheet for the test?
  • Do our students “follow the recipe” or are they increasingly asked to take responsibility for their learning products, process and results?
  • Is the audience for student work simply the teacher, or are students asked to share their learning with peers, family, community?

Theme 3. The digital age has redefined literacy. To paraphrase David Warlick, Literacy now means the ability to: find information, decode it, critically evaluate it, organize it into digital libraries, and be able to share it with others. School boards should ask …

  • If we’re no longer the “information gatekeepers,” are we teaching our students to critically evaluate information and use it responsibly?
  • Does our technology get used mainly by the educators, or are students regularly employing it to create understanding and share their learning?
  • Is our credit system based on seat time or can it be expanded beyond the school walls to any place / time virtual learning?

And finally I will wrap up the talk with an overarching perspective on accountability and assessment. I find it ironic that while schools chase NCLB “proficiency,” life has become an open book test. We need to unleash the power of assessment that targets and inspires. One-shot, high stakes tests are just autopsies. Students need regular check-ups where teachers can gauge student progress and target instruction. Ultimately the program must be designed to foster student self-assessment that gives them responsibility for monitoring their own progress. Students should be supported in on-going sell-reflection that addresses questions such as:

  • How can I use this knowledge and these skills to make a difference in my life?
  • How am I progressing as a learner?
  • How can I communicate what I’m learning with others?
  • How can I work with teachers and other students to improve my learning?

Schools will need to become places that create engaging and relevant learning experiences, provoke student reflection, and help students apply the learning to life. Authentic  accountability is reciprocal …  leadership is responsible to provide resources for success, educators are responsible for results. Simply sorting students along the “bell curve” won’t do.

… Please add a comment below or Twitter to let me know if I’m leaving anything out.

Sept 22, 2009 UPDATE: For School Board Leaders’ responses to the workshop see: School Board Leaders Reflect on Essential Questions / 21st Century Learning