Principal's Message - November Edition 2009-2010

HERE A CHANGE, THERE A CHANGE, EVERYWHERE A CHANGE…IS IT FOR THE BETTER?
I hope everyone had a restful and rejuvenating holiday weekend. For all of you who celebrated, Happy Thanksgiving! I would like to take a moment to describe why you are an amazing staff. It has to do with the hard work you all give on a regular basis, the soaring expectations we hold each other to, and your ability to stay focused on the important work of providing the best environment for our students.

As the school shifts to empower more people of our amazing community to make the “big” decisions, it requires research, participation, and, most importantly, time. There are a couple of the many committees I would like to talk about that have been doing just that. For starters, the Organizational Cabinet has put in the time to move many ideas, plans, and initiatives forward. Through the preparation of Theories of Action, the follow through of designated responsibilities, and participation in carving out the best plan, the members of the Organizational Cabinet have done a tremendous job in putting together a more definitive and supportive future for our school. We have developed amazing ideas for concerns such as the new student intake process, building incentive programs, using the school messenger to its full capacity, gathering functional phone numbers for students, and so much more. Each week, we are meeting regularly to gather, discuss, and finalize procedures, action steps, and more to improve the school. The work does not only take place in those two periods. It requires so much time to make sure plans are carried out. The hardest part for this team was to convert our participation from delivering our opinions to an audience to creating proposals on how to address building concerns. This school has been built on concerns with little action from the community as a whole. The Organizational Cabinet has been the pioneer in changing our environment to one that takes action. Again, they are doing what it takes to participate in creating change instead of being a victim of circumstances. It takes hard work, participation, and the dedication of time to be the team members that they are. Amazing work!

Another committee I would like to recognize is the Discipline Committee. This group has been the topic of many of my Principal’s Messages in the past, and for good reason. The committee continues to reflect on their process to address the concerns of the staff in a productive way. Not only do these members give up their own time to participate, they are looking at all aspects of what affects the discipline in our school. It is easy to let the emotion drive the decision making of this committee. These members avoid this by gathering input from as many people as possible and looking at the impact of the different parties involved with each idea raised. They have recently adapted the Theory of Action to move their process along. It has paid off. More initiatives are coming out of this group than ever. It goes to show, it is far more engaging for a group when the time is used productively. The Discipline Committee generates time to reflect to find the ideal methods to do this. Many plans are being launched by them. For one, we are taking more time to recognize the successes of our school. This team noticed that we were concentrating too much attention to the negative aspects of our school. To compensate for this, they came up with a way to bring light to the students who were doing the right thing. The Falcon News!!! These morning announcements have become a ritual I look forward to hearing and it has only been put together five school days ago. They have also generated a model for the Teacher Buddy concept which they hope to launch by December 10th. Incredible work!

Finally, I would like to bring light to the amazing work of the Social Studies Department. I am completely impressed with this group. They have adapted the data process to identify “Time Lines” as their area of focus for their department. They have created bulletin boards to provide an in-classroom resource for the students to support this initiative. They are sharing ideas for lesson planning and suggestions on how to improve their classrooms. They are seeking each other outside of their meeting time to have the conversations that will benefit the work they are doing with the children. They are ALL contributing to the ideas they are generating in their departments. They are establishing their own deadlines and holding each other to them. This converts open ended conversations to steps on developing change, extremely important for becoming a productive unit. I asked them to turn in a curriculum map for each grade level. Thinking this task would take at least two weeks. This group had them e-mailed to me within a week’s time. I was blown away. The feedback from the process was positive. They are a team as they check in with one another and provide support to each other whenever it is needed. When these things are in place, ideas will flow and the learning environment will be even stronger. Phenomenal work!

I would love to list every example of what is taking place at our school. There are too many for this monthly newsletter. All I have is the feedback that finds its way back to me and what I observe. People are feeling more comfortable to tell each other when they are letting down our students or when they are not holding up their part of the plan. We are checking in with each other more often than not. I have staff members coming up to me and recommending that I check up on others to see if they are in a good state of mind.

With all the changes that have taken place with staff, schedules, policies, and procedures, you have all kept your eyes on what is most important…Our kids. I never thought I could make difficult decisions when I was an intern for a school. Before I became a principal I avoided confrontation. These children have given me purpose every time I walk in the building. When I have those beautiful children close to my heart, I feel like I can take on the world. They are part of me with every decision I make and every battle I fight. When I see a teacher not doing what he or she can for children like winging a lesson or not pushing our students to his or her full potential, it is easy for me to have those difficult conversations to let him or her know. I hope they inspire you.

FINAL WORDS

Continue to bring everything every day for the J13 students and support each other. Thank you for your amazing work.

DECEMBER STAFF BIRTHDAYS
Joshua Allen December 7th
Shirley MacClean December 11th
Christina Schenk December 15th
Hilda Tirado December 18th
Deborah DeStaffan December 28th

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“... a large part of what we call ‘good teaching’ is the teacher's ability to attain affective objectives through challenging the students' fixed beliefs and getting them to discuss issues.” –Benjamin Bloom


Article of the Month

The focus of administration will be “Bloom’s Taxonomy” when we begin our Informal Observations. Please review this informative article.
Taken from the website: http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy

Introduction

One of the basic questions facing educators has always been "Where do we begin in seeking to improve human thinking?" (Houghton, 2004). Fortunately we do not have to begin from scratch in searching for answers to this complicated question. The Communities Resolving Our Problems (C.R.O.P.) recommends, "One place to begin is in defining the nature of thinking. Before we can make it better, we need to know more of what it is" (Houghton, 2004).

Benjamin S. Bloom extensively contemplated the nature of thinking, eventually authoring or co-authoring 18 books. According to a biography of Bloom, written by former student Elliot W. Eisner, "It was clear that he was in love with the process of finding out, and finding out is what I think he did best. One of Bloom's great talents was having a nose for what is significant" (2002).

Although it received little attention when first published, Bloom's Taxonomy has since been translated into 22 languages and is one of the most widely applied and most often cited references in education. (Anderson & Sosniak, 1994, preface), (Houghton, 2004), ( Krathwohl, 2002), ( oz-TeacherNet, 2001). As of this writing, three other chapters in this ebook make reference to Bloom's Taxonomy, yet another testament to its relevance.

History

In 1780, Abigail Adams stated, "Learning is not attained by chance; it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence" ( quotationspage.com, 2005). Learning, teaching, identifying educational goals, and thinking are all complicated concepts interwoven in an intricate web. Bloom was arduous, diligent, and patient while seeking to demystify these concepts and untangle this web. He made "the improvement of student learning" (Bloom 1971, Preface) the central focus of his life's work.

Discussions during the 1948 Convention of the American Psychological Association led Bloom to spearhead a group of educators who eventually undertook the ambitious task of classifying educational goals and objectives. Their intent was to develop a method of classification for thinking behaviors that were believed to be important in the processes of learning. Eventually, this framework became a taxonomy of three domains:
The cognitive - knowledge based domain, consisting of six levels
The affective - attitudinal based domain, consisting of five levels, and
The psychomotor - skills based domain, consisting of six levels.

In 1956, eight years after the group first began, work on the cognitive domain was completed and a handbook commonly referred to as "Bloom's Taxonomy" was published. This chapter focuses its attention on the cognitive domain.

While Bloom pushed for the use of the term "taxonomy," others in the group resisted because of the unfamiliarity of the term within educational circles. Eventually Bloom prevailed, forever linking his name and the term. The small volume intended for university examiners "has been transformed into a basic reference for all educators worldwide. Unexpectedly, it has been used by curriculum planners, administrators, researchers, and classroom teachers at all levels of education" (Anderson & Sosniak, 1994, p. 1). While it should be noted that other educational taxonomies and hierarchical systems have been developed, it is Bloom's Taxonomy which remains, even after nearly fifty years, the de facto standard.

What is Bloom's Taxonomy?

Understanding that "taxonomy" and "classification" are synonymous helps dispel uneasiness with the term. Bloom's Taxonomy is a multi-tiered model of classifying thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity. Throughout the years, the levels have often been depicted as a stairway, leading many teachers to encourage their students to "climb to a higher (level of) thought." The lowest three levels are: knowledge, comprehension, and application. The highest three levels are: analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. "The taxonomy is hierarchical; [in that] each level is subsumed by the higher levels. In other words, a student functioning at the 'application' level has also mastered the material at the 'knowledge' and 'comprehension' levels." (UW Teaching Academy, 2003). One can easily see how this arrangement led to natural divisions of lower and higher level thinking.

Clearly, Bloom's Taxonomy has stood the test of time. Due to its long history and popularity, it has been condensed, expanded, and reinterpreted in a variety of ways. Research findings have led to the discovery of a veritable smorgasbord of interpretations and applications falling on a continuum ranging from tight overviews to expanded explanations. Nonetheless, one recent revision (designed by one of the co-editors of the original taxonomy along with a former Bloom student) merits particular attention.

Revised Bloom's Taxonomy (RBT)

During the 1990's, a former student of Bloom's, Lorin Anderson, led a new assembly which met for the purpose of updating the taxonomy, hoping to add relevance for 21st century students and teachers. This time "representatives of three groups [were present]: cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists and instructional researchers, and testing and assessment specialists" (Anderson, & Krathwohl, 2001, p. xxviii). Like the original group, they were also arduous and diligent in their pursuit of learning, spending six years to finalize their work. Published in 2001, the revision includes several seemingly minor yet actually quite significant changes. Several excellent sources are available which detail the revisions and reasons for the changes. A more concise summary appears here. The changes occur in three broad categories: terminology, structure, and emphasis.

Terminology Changes

Changes in terminology between the two versions are perhaps the most obvious differences and can also cause the most confusion. Basically, Bloom's six major categories were changed from noun to verb forms. Additionally, the lowest level of the original, knowledge was renamed and became remembering. Finally, comprehension and synthesis were retitled to understanding and creating. In an effort to minimize the confusion, comparison images appear below.

See Website for image and explanation.

The new terms are defined as:
Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long-term memory.
Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.
Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure through executing, or implementing.
Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing, and attributing.
Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.
Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing.
(Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, pp. 67-68)

Structural changes

Structural changes seem dramatic at first, yet are quite logical when closely examined. Bloom's original cognitive taxonomy was a one-dimensional form. With the addition of products, the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy takes the form of a two-dimensional table. One of the dimensions identifies The Knowledge Dimension (or the kind of knowledge to be learned) while the second identifies The Cognitive Process Dimension (or the process used to learn). As represented on the grid below, the intersection of the knowledge and cognitive process categories form twenty-four separate cells as represented on the "Taxonomy Table" below.

The Knowledge Dimension on the left side is composed of four levels that are defined as Factual, Conceptual, Procedural, and Meta-Cognitive. The Cognitive Process Dimension across the top of the grid consists of six levels that are defined as Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. Each level of both dimensions of the table is subdivided.

Each of the four Knowledge Dimension levels is subdivided into either three or four categories (e.g. Factual is divided into Factual, Knowledge of Terminology, and Knowledge of Specific Details and Elements). The Cognitive Process Dimension levels are also subdivided with the number of sectors in each level ranging from a low of three to a high of eight categories. For example, Remember is subdivided into the three categories of Remember, Recognizing, and Recalling while the Understanding level is divided into eight separate categories. The resulting grid, containing 19 subcategories is most helpful to teachers in both writing objectives and aligning standards with curricular. The "Why" and "How" sections of this chapter further discuss use of the Taxonomy Table as well as provide specific examples of applications.

Table1. Bloom's Taxonomy (Website provides a table to see this)
The Knowledge Dimension
The Cognitive Process Dimension
Remember
Understand
Apply
Analyze
Evaluate
Create

Factual Knowledge
List
Summarize
Classify
Order
Rank
Combine

Conceptual Knowledge
Describe
Interpret
Experiment
Explain
Assess
Plan

Procedural Knowledge
Tabulate
Predict
Calculate
Differentiate
Conclude
Compose

Meta-Cognitive Knowledge
Appropriate Use
Execute
Construct
Achieve
Action
Actualize

Copyright (c) 2005 Extended Campus -- Oregon State University http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/coursedev/models/id/taxonomy/#table Designer/Developer - Dianna Fisher

Changes in Emphasis

Emphasis is the third and final category of changes. As noted earlier, Bloom himself recognized that the taxonomy was being "unexpectedly" used by countless groups never considered an audience for the original publication. The revised version of the taxonomy is intended for a much broader audience. Emphasis is placed upon its use as a "more authentic tool for curriculum planning, instructional delivery and assessment" (oz-TeacherNet, 2001).

Why use Bloom's Taxonomy?

As history has shown, this well known, widely applied scheme filled a void and provided educators with one of the first systematic classifications of the processes of thinking and learning. The cumulative hierarchical framework consisting of six categories each requiring achievement of the prior skill or ability before the next, more complex, one, remains easy to understand. Out of necessity, teachers must measure their students' ability. Accurately doing so requires a classification of levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. Bloom's Taxonomy provided the measurement tool for thinking.

With the dramatic changes in society over the last five decades, the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy provides an even more powerful tool to fit today's teachers' needs. The structure of the Revised Taxonomy Table matrix "provides a clear, concise visual representation" (Krathwohl, 2002) of the alignment between standards and educational goals, objectives, products, and activities.

Today's teachers must make tough decisions about how to spend their classroom time. Clear alignment of educational objectives with local, state, and national standards is a necessity. Like pieces of a huge puzzle, everything must fit properly. The Revised Bloom's Taxonomy Table clarifies the fit of each lesson plan's purpose, "essential question," goal or objective. The twenty-four-cell grid from Oregon State University that is shown above along with the Printable Taxonomy Table Examples can easily be used in conjunction with a chart. When used in this manner the "Essential Question" or lesson objective becomes clearly defined.

How can Bloom's Taxonomy Be Used?

A search of the World Wide Web will yield clear evidence that Bloom's Taxonomy has been applied to a variety of situations. Current results include a broad spectrum of applications represented by articles and websites describing everything from corrosion training to medical preparation. In almost all circumstances when an instructor desires to move a group of students through a learning process utilizing an organized framework, Bloom's Taxonomy can prove helpful. Yet the educational setting (K-graduate) remains the most often used application. A brief explanation of one example is described below.

The educational journal Theory into Practice published an entire issue on the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy. Included is an article entitled, "Using the Revised Taxonomy to Plan and Deliver Team-Taught, Integrated, Thematic Units" (Ferguson, 2002).

The writer describes the use of the revised Bloom's Taxonomy to plan and deliver an integrated English and history course entitled "Western Culture." The taxonomy provided the team-teachers with a common language with which to translate and discuss state standards from two different subject areas. Moreover, it helped them to understand how their subjects overlapped and how they could develop conceptual and procedural knowledge concurrently. Furthermore, the taxonomy table in the revised taxonomy provided the history and English teachers with a new outlook on assessment and enabled them to create assignments and projects that required students to operate at more complex levels of thinking (Abstract, Ferguson, 2002).

Additionally, The Encyclopedia of Educational Technology website contains an excellent and extensive description of the use of the Revised Taxonomy Table in writing, examining and revising objectives to insure the alignment of the objectives with both the standards and the assessments. Three charts can be found on the site one of which compares "Unclear Objectives" with "Revised Objectives".

Bloom's group initially met hoping to reduce the duplication of effort by faculty at various universities. In the beginning, the scope of their purpose was limited to facilitating the exchange of test items measuring the same educational objectives. Intending the Taxonomy "as a method of classifying educational objectives, educational experiences, learning processes, and evaluation questions and problems" (Paul, 1985 p. 39), numerous examples of test items (mostly multiple choice) were included. This led to a natural linkage of specific verbs and products with each level of the taxonomy. Thus, when designing effective lesson plans, teachers often look to Bloom's Taxonomy for guidance.

Likewise the Revised Taxonomy includes specific verb and product linkage with each of the levels of the Cognitive Process Dimension. However, due to its 19 subcategories and two-dimensional organization, there is more clarity and less confusion about the fit of a specific verb or product to a given level. Thus the Revised Taxonomy offers teachers an even more powerful tool to help design their lesson plans.

As touched upon earlier, through the years, Bloom's Taxonomy has given rise to educational concepts including terms such as high and low level thinking. It has also been closely linked with multiple intelligences (Noble, 2004) problem solving skills, creative and critical thinking, and more recently, technology integration. For example, currently, the State of Georgia K-12 Technology Plan has included in its website an excellent graphic depicting technology alignment using Bloom's Taxonomy with learning through the two axes of instructional approach and authenticity.

Using the Revised Taxonomy in an adaptation from the Omaha Public Schools Teacher's Corner, a lesson objective based upon the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears is presented for each of the six levels of the Cognitive Process as shown on the Revised Taxonomy Table.

Remember: Describe where Goldilocks lived.
Understand: Summarize what the Goldilocks story was about.
Apply: Construct a theory as to why Goldilocks went into the house.
Analyze: Differentiate between how Goldilocks reacted and how you would react in each story event.
Evaluate: Assess whether or not you think this really happened to Goldilocks.
Create: Compose a song, skit, poem, or rap to convey the Goldilocks story in a new form.
Although this is a very simple example of the application of Bloom's taxonomy the author is hopeful that it will demonstrate both the ease and the usefulness of the Revised Taxonomy Table.

Summary

Countless people know, love and are comfortable with the original Bloom's Taxonomy and are understandably hesitant to change. After all, change is difficult for most people. The original Bloom's Taxonomy was and is a superb tool for educators. Yet, even "the original group always considered the [Taxonomy] framework a work in progress, neither finished nor final" (Anderson & Krathwohl 2001 p. xxvii). The new century has brought us the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy which really is new and improved.