Illustrate 5 reasons Bloom's Taxonomy could be useful to the preparation of Literature learning objectives, activities, and planned assessments

Bloom's taxonomy consists of six different levels involved in the thinking process. They are: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. Bloom further breaks these categories down into Reproductive Skills and Productive Skills with the first three levels listed under the Reproductive Skills and the last three under the Productive Skills. (This information was found under the heading Corrosion Doctors, Bloom's Taxonomy at the following site: http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Training/Bloom-taxonomy.htm).

Bloom's cognitive category helps me put my learning objectives in better perspective. I want to raise the bar of my students. If I just teach them mediocre literature, than all they will learn is mediocre literature. If I teach students higher level literature, possibly even college level literature, than I know my students will have obtained a higher reading, comprehension, and the analyzing level of literature and information. However, if I choose literature that is too high for the students that I am teaching, than the students will get frustrated for attempting to read the difficult material, especially if they do not comprehend what it is they are reading. If students cannot understand what they are reading, than I cannot expect them to analyze the information, evaluate the information, or even apply the information to either their own life or even on a test or paper that I would assign.

Bloom's taxonomy has inspired me to create a memory game for my future students. Literature is so diverse and a lot of complicated themes as well as information are carried throughout a storyline. Just utilizing the first cognitive learning level, which is knowledge, I could create a game that will require students to recall and reflect on a particular story that we would just have finished reading. I would call this game "Flip-a-chip". I once had a teacher do something similar, however she used it as her reward system. I would use her method as a way to engage the students in the game. I would use poker chips, each chip is a different color, each color would represent the number of points earned. I would ask the class a question that I would devise causing them to recall specific information from the text without looking and then answer the question with as much detail as possible. I would then toss the correct colored chip to the student that answered the question and go on to the next question. At the end of the game I would count up the points earned by each student and record them as points earned toward their final grade. This game is the easiest and most interactive way for students to recall and share information with fellow students. Everyone wants the points added to their grade and everyone wants to participate in such a fun activity.

Another technique I would use when teaching "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet" would be to divide the class into 2 groups. One group would be the Capulet's and the other group the Montague's. I would designate these groups at the start of teaching this play and the students would remain in these two separate groups until the end of the play. This method of teaching would allow the students to better connect to the play as well as see the overall picture that violence, hatred, and war leads to nowhere but death and to fight and pit people against each other, ostracising one another would only cause resentment and more battles to be fought. I suppose that this technique would fall under Bloom's Application section of the the cognitive taxonomy. Further this teaching technique falls under Bloom's Analyzing section as well as the Synthesis section of the cognitive taxonomy. Students would be able to use the knowledge and lessons learned from this technique for every day knowledge and current situations (not only because our country is at war, but also because students themselves form cliques and ostracise one another especially in a high school setting).

I know that I usually learn using flash cards. They always seemed the most helpful to me in my English classes. Knowing this technique works for myself, I would create flash cards for my students with vocabulary words on them, the definition on the back and a color key to distinguish between adjectives, verbs, and nouns. I did this for myself throughout my school years and it helped me learn every time I took the time to create them. I would test the knowledge of my students by using the flash cards. I would read them the vocabulary word and ask them to define it and then tell me what category does it fall into. If they don't know I would refer them to the color, if they remember what my color key is that would help them. Then I would probe further and ask the student that answered the question why is that word a noun, adjective, adverb, or verb. Hoping that the definition would help, if not I would give an example. This technique will help the students to study, study as a class, and overall help them with their critical thinking skills.

My assessments of the students would be mostly open ended question exams. I want my students to think and tell me their opinion and their own interpretation of the information gathered from the story. Everyone has their own experiences, writing open ended questions allow me to get to know the student's lives better, as well as get to know their experiences and where they draw their knowledge from. Open ended questions also allow students to improve their writing skills; which is extremely important to an English teacher. Assessments where students are required to write their own ideas, experiences, and interpretation of the text is another form of using Bloom's taxonomy in that is fulfills all of the cognitive taxonomy requirements. Knowledge, comprehension, application, analyzing, synthesis, and evaluation.

Most of Bloom's taxonomy I knew already with the exception of synthesis. I just never knew that they were "Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Intelligence". I have many ideas on how I want to teach and the activities and ways I would present each text that I will be teaching as an English teacher. I just never had the opportunity to write down my ideas. Only when I think about a particular text do I think, how will I teach this to students, and then I get flooded with ideas. I am a very versatile person, I think on my feet and if the wind changes, I follow the wind of change. I'm the type of person that walks around a classroom drawing information from students asking them to think and not just copy an answer from a neighbor or the text. I want them to think about the quotes they use and tell me why are they important to the story, why are they important to their own personal stories.

The following are the sites that I kept looking back and forth at to help answer the 5 reasons Bloom's taxonomy could be helpful to my teaching practices:

http://www.officeport.com/edu/blooms.htm
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Training/Bloom-taxonomy.htm

Learning Objectives continued from class worksheet

On further introspection as to why it is important for me to give students the opportunity to find hidden talents in my classroom I came up with the following reasons:

1. It is imperitive for students to find out that they have a talent. Everyone needs to know that they are good at something. Students need the confidence, self-esteem boost, and recoginition of their talents for them to develope their own identity.

2. Students need to be given the opportunity to develope their talents and identity. The students need to know that there are some things that they are just naturally better at than other students. This helps students see that they have a purpose, a reason to get up in the morning; which leads to having goals, developing dreams, and looking to make future plans.

If I can give students the opportunity to grow as individuals and allow them to find their strengths, I can then help them develope those strengths so that they can utilize them within the classroom and then even later in life.