Yolaspace

                                                                                                         Recently I had a backtalking situation in my classroom.  Most of the class (1st grade)  was involved in an assessment activity about colors and school supplies, listenning for specific details; except  two boys who were very distracted in their talking and logically they weren´t doing anything about the task.  They didn´t realice that I stopped  to speak and  all children were watching them. I make the gesture to make silence to other children and when they finally noticed what the room was mute,  we all began to laugh. It was a relaxing and comic moment, I did not  say anything, children helped me with their natural impulse. I just switched boys´ places and the activity continued.  It was a good experience, lucky me.

To manage discipline with younger children is easy, even funny by changing  the pace of activities, but with older students is more difficult to do, because teenagers are used to question everything, even the teacher.

Here is a very different  experience:

A teacher had a very unpleasant  situation with a fifth grade student a few days ago, he scolded to a student  for disturbing his peers and the boy confronted him verbally. The teacher  didn´t expect this reaction,  so he was very upset and angry and the disscussion became very strong between them. I think he lost his mind at the moment,  falling into the boy´s game. Results? The boy was referred to principal´s office and suspended for a month, and the teacher took a reprimend and a very, very bad experience, I think.

It was a disgusting and shameful show for everyone at school, but the fact made me think If it had happened to me, how  I would have reacted? I actually do not know, I teach to teenagers too. However, I think in these cases the teacher must be calm and think about the situation before saying something that is taken by emotions. What do you think?

Yola

As parents and teachers we all want our children to use the necessary critical and creative skills for solving realistic situations and problems on the real life and thanks to the Bloom´s Taxonomy we can develop their abilities and skills. Unfortunately, sometimes we more prefer to ask questions at remembering level, which is the lowest level of thinking because it includes only memorization.

If we want to encourage our students to be more reflexive, critical and creative, we have to take them beyond of the first level. Through critical and creative thinking and problem-solving, children create inventive solutions, illustrate their ideas, and make models of their inventions. Creative thinking lesson plans provides children with opportunities to develop and practice higher thinking skills.

Children are very talented and creative, and we as teachers can present them challenging projects in order they have the opportunity to develop their potential by creating and solving the challenge.

I want to share very interesting and useful information about models of creative thinking skills in children, which I took from Inventors.about.com.The author suggests a list of activities for develop and promote the critical thinking in children. Suggestions are listed below:

Creative Thinking – List of Activities                      

1. Introducing Creative Thinking                                                
2. Practicing Creativity with the Class
3. Practicing Creative Thinking with the Class
4. Developing an Invention Idea
5. Brainstorming for Creative Solutions
6. Practicing the Critical Parts of Creative Thinking
7. Completing the Invention
8. Naming the Invention
9. Optional Marketing Activities
10. Parent Involvement
11. Young Inventors’ Day

About planning and student-centered lessons, I recommend to read the post called: Can we teach creative and critical thinking? By Zoe Burgess in Good Education, clicking on http://www.good.is/post/can-we-teach-creative-and-critical-thinking/

One of the most important parts of teaching takes place long before the teacher begins any lesson. Planning, designing, organizing and developing  instruction and activities are a major part of any teacher’s job. Is necessary to specify the objective of the lesson, the activities to carry out, the materials needed, the way to students will be organized and the way the learning process will be assessed. If all of us as teachers were effective at planning our lessons, we will find that our day-to-day teaching tasks much easier. Unfortunately, sometimes we don’t give the necessary time to truly create effective and unique plans for our classes.

The most common mistake we commit when we are new or inexperienced teachers is  to want to  produce very detailed plans, based step by step on coursebooks,  showing and timing clearly what is happening at any particular time in the lesson. However in a real teaching environment it is perhaps impractical to consider these details when we didn´t take in count  student’ s characteristics and needs on planning. As a teacher I realized that there is not a magic and universal formula for planning; every lesson and class is different and I need to be able to adapt whatever source if it is suitable for my students; and  because of my teacher´s  reflection, I understood  that a  course book can certainly help us on planning, but it cannot replace our own ideas for what we want to achieve in a class.

 According to Bloom´s Taxonomy of learning,  the cognitive domain is  not the only one we can develop in our students, but the affective and psychomotor domains too.

The first activity that comes to my mind is a literature circle; but there are a lot of situations as a teacher we can plan to develop our student´s skills and abilities. I can imagine a guided reading with my students in which previous knowledge is activate before the first reading,  testing their ability of comprehension after the first reading  and guiding them through an analysis and synthesis of the text, to finally assign a task based on the text  in which the students show creativity. Every student has the discernment to evaluate or to make judgments about the value of their own results.  I think that through a well planned activity we can help to the affective and psychomotor domains too, like in a transversal activity because without we realize of that, many aspects or categories are included in it at the same time, for instance responses, attitudes, values, feelings and knowledge.

Bloom´s Taxonomy provides us with the necessary elements for doing a good and effective plan. Each level has a variety of useful “To do” or verbs according to each level and the objective that we keep in mind when we design an activity. 

I find Bloom´s Taxonomy very useful even in a reading class or session for developing an activity from it.  The following is an activity based on  the  reading  of a fantastic story called ” The Nixie in the pond”  for 6th grade. The 6 levels of Bloom´s Taxonomy are involved in. If you want to read this fantastic story please click on the link.

“The Nixie in the pond”  by the brothers Grimm  http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/story101.pdf      

Recalling: Before the first reading elicit  ideas of what  children  think the story is about. List the characters of the story.

Understanding: Retell the story in your words.  Where does the story take place? Why did the miller accept the nixie´s demand? why didn´t the miller pay his debt?

Applying: Relate the tale to personal experience. Create your own fantastic monster, give it a name and describe it in your own words.

Analyzing: Discuss the personality of each of the supporting characters.What objects gave the old woman to the young woman? What the purpose was? What do you know about that  mermaids are?

Evaluating: Answer the questions: Did the story like you? Yes? No? Why? How would you change the end?

Is it a fictional or fantastic story? Which part would you change in the story?

Creating: Make a fantastic family tree showing the relationships present in the story. Display all of them in the classroom. Share your results.