Tiffany

Tiffany's journey....as edited...

If I were to develop my own taxonomy for classroom learning, it would be a blend of Bloom's revised taxonomy (remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating) and Costa and Kallick's Habits of Mind. Although the habits of mind are new to me, I think Costa and Kallick took into account many of the things that I do as I adapt my teaching methods to the varying personalities, work ethic, learning styles, and behaviors of students within my classroom. I must always consider prior knowledge (remembering) in order to ensure that my students can understand and apply. Once we've successfully managed those steps, we can work toward analyzing and evaluating. I would say that I rarely implement the creating step. In my opinion this step would require a significant span of time be devoted to one topic. Sadly, due to the lack of transfer of knowledge that many students exhibit and the GLE's that must be covered, I must reteach some information that my students should know already and then don't have extra time to explore the material in depth which would be required to get them to the "creating" step. However, I do try to implement creating while working on longer projects after the MAP test.

I think I'll begin discussing Costa and Kallick's habits of mind with each class that I have. I think "defining" some of these habits, will enable students to identify strengths and weaknesses, areas they are comfortable in vs. not comfortable, and areas they need to focus on. It will also let the students know that as an educator, I recognize their different learning styles and behaviors and that each of them can contribute to the learning that takes place within my classroom.

Regarding "Questioning in the Classroom": I think my level of questioning according to "Costa's Levels of Inquiry" varies depending on how familiar my students are with the subject matter. If we are discussing decimals, I can ask students to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division problems. Once they can do this consistently, I could increase the difficulty by asking a question such as, "How would the solution change if the decimal moved from to ?"

After having Amy script my questions, I realized that when I thought I was asking questions, I was actually just giving fill-in-the-blank statements and was expecting students to be able to regurgitate the information that I have given to them thru modeling example after example. I stress to them that many problems in math may be solved by using a template and the students know what to do/how to solve by recalling the many problems we've solved (solving problems in a certain order becomes a habit).

I encourage students to ask questions as long as they are relevant. However, when you are dealing with calculations, there are only so many questions that can be asked beyond process questions. However, when you get into things such as data, tables, graphs, etc., you can interpret data, interpolate, extrapolate, play "what if" games, etc. You can rephrase survey questions, add in biases, narrow the population being studied, etc. All of these things can lead to additional questions being asked by the students.