DAY 2: Bloom's Taxonomy - How we come to think what we think

Every teacher is familiar with what is called Bloom’s Taxonomy. Essentially, it is a hierarchy of the kind of thinking humans practice. Our brain works on a number of different levels. Sometimes we can simply recite facts without necessarily understanding their importance. For example, we may know that the war of 1812 took place in 1812 (duh), but not be able to say who was involved, why it took place, what effect it had on other events, and whether or not it was a just war. The older we get, the more sophisticated thinking we can do. Thus, as you move up in grade level, the kinds of thinking you are asked to do are further along the hierarchy. Here’s the hierarchy. Don’t skim—read it through:

KNOWLEDGE
DESCRIPTION
Remembering or recognizing something without necessarily understanding, using, or changing it. ASSOCIATED VERBS
Name, recite, state, repeat
SAMPLE QUESTION
Who sponsored the League of Nations?

COMPREHENSION
DESCRIPTION
Understanding the material being communicated without necessarily relating it to anything else.
ASSOCIATED VERBS
Summarize, describe, define
SAMPLE QUESTION
Give a summary of the terms of the League of Nations.

APPLICATION
DESCRIPTION
Using a general concept to solve a particular problem.
ASSOCIATED VERBS
Use, apply, make, determine, build
SAMPLE QUESTION
How would the League of Nations affect policy in post-war Europe?

ANALYSIS
DESCRIPTION
Breaking something down into its parts.
ASSOCIATED VERBS
Compare, contrast, identify, list
SAMPLE QUESTION
Explain why Henry Cabot Lodge and his followers in the Senate were so against the League of Nations, giving at least two reasons.

SYNTHESIS
DESCRIPTION
Creating something new by combining different ideas.
ASSOCIATED VERBS
Suggest, create, make, construct, develop
SAMPLE QUESTION
How could the League of Nations have been altered to receive Senate approval without sacrificing its effectiveness?.

EVALUATION

DESCRIPTION
Judging the value of materials or methods as they might be applied to a particular situation.
ASSOCIATED VERBS
Evaluate, justify, choose, select
SAMPLE QUESTION
Do you believe that passage of the League of Nations would have given too much power to the Executive Branch, as Lodge believed? Justify your answer.

When we are first learning something, we are lower on the hierarchy: “That color is red” or “The main character is Lucy.” As students learning new things all the time, we tend to do most of our thinking on these lower levels. In fact, up until the ages of 14-16, when our brain growth alters a bit and allows for more abstract thinking, we have a hard time moving beyond the lower levels of the hierarchy. What this means is we spend a lot of time familiarizing ourselves with information, but not really grappling with it in the higher levels of thinking. We can’t. To do the higher levels of thinking requires more reflection and a sense of self. It requires that knowledge and comprehension be faultless in execution. There’s a reason you don’t ask a five year old in a kindergarten classroom if he feels that Sam-I-Am is justified in preferring not to eat Green Eggs and Ham. He simply cannot answer you in any substantive way. He can’t analyze the text for clues, probably hasn’t had a similar experience to relate to the book, and isn’t worldly enough to recognize that many people are irrationally motivated to act as they do by fear. In fact, it may take him a minute to realize that, yeah, actually, Sam-I-Am does keep resisting offers of Green Eggs and Ham. That’s because a five year old is still mastering acquiring knowledge and comprehending it. All you can really do is keep him reading, ask him tough questions that he might not be able to answer convincingly, and move him toward abstract thinking. Eventually, he WILL be able to discuss Sam-I-Am in some depth, but he’ll be a lot older than five when he can. Until then, exposure is the name of the game, and exposure requires lower levels of thinking the most. So, in Middle School and ninth grade, Knowledge and Comprehension are the two kinds of thinking you’ll do the most of (you do practice tougher stuff, but not as frequently), and it isn’t until 10th-12th grade that we start asking you to take care of knowledge and comprehension on your own and to start grappling with the higher order thinking skills on a consistent basis.

Think of all the classes you have been in where people whined that they wanted to be tested on the definitions of words, or to have problems exactly like the practice problems with the numbers mildly altered. Think of your peers who have complained that the test had problems unlike the one talked about in class. This is testament to TWO things:
1. They’ve mastered knowledge and comprehension levels of thinking
2. They’re resisting doing the higher levels of thinking because it doesn’t come as easily. They are, in fact, a lot like Sam-I-Am.

What I have noticed is that students (mostly girls, actually, who tend to be better organized and who like to classify their material and therefore have had more practice mastering skills lower on the hierarchy) have a harder time breaking out of those lower levels to think differently. Their methods of making note cards and lists has worked very well for them up until now, thank you very much, and they’ve gotten darn good at it. The problem is that memorizing material is usually less than half the battle in preparing for larger tests and exams, which will ask for all types of thinking. Note that when you make flashcards and basic outlines and memorize them, you’re not going beyond comprehension. When you are thinking on these lower levels of the hierarchy, you come to the material with declarative statements:
1. To “vacillate” means to flip flop.
2. Hester loves her daughter.
3. The Pythagorean Theorem says A squared plus B squared equals C squared.

The trick to studying at the higher levels means you should come to the material with QUESTIONS:
1. How would I use vacillate in a sentence?
2. Why does Hester love her totally nutso-freak of a child?
3. Under what circumstances would I use the Pythagorean theorem?

Honestly, coming to the material with questions is a MASSIVE paradigm shift, and it seems really weird at first, but material starts to make more sense and stay in your memory longer when you do. It requires you to contextualize the details you’ve been simply trying to memorize and demands that you understand them on a deeper level. Consider this: you couldn’t possibly write out an memorize all the quotes that might appear on an exam, and no doubt you see that it would be insane to try (I’ve actually seen students try anyway, and yes, it is insane). And yet, many people approach studying in just that way, whereas it would be far more helpful to approach the books in the same way you think about people you’ve just met for the first time and you’re wondering whether or not you ever want something to do with them again. You think about their tone of voice, their appearance, the things they talked about. You make judgments about their values, their likes and dislikes, their appearances, their friends, how they acted in the environments they were in. THAT is exactly the same sort of thinking you need to practice when scanning books for potentially important quotes. What are the quotes that are particularly revealing about characters or events in the plot? If you approach the task of finding potential quotes that way, you’ll learn A LOT about the novel/story/play, etc. and you’ll be forced to recognize the important details along the way. Then, when you get to the test, you should also ask questions:

• Under what circumstances would someone say something like this? Is there anything in any of the PLOTS that matches such circumstances?
• Is there anything about the STYLE of the writing that suggest certain books?
• What’s the emotional state of the speaker? Is there a CHARACTER who felt like that?
• Are there any clues about SETTING that suggests where the quote might have been said?

DAY 1: Why we are doing what we are doing

TWO QUESTIONS AND A POINT.

Purpose of the class: To understand why we do what we do in English class, and consider how this work matters in life more than it does on a transcript. Knowing why you act makes the act more memorable, meaningful, purposeful, enjoyable, and endurable when the going gets tough.

The questions we addressed:

1. What is language?

• An agreed upon set of rules governing visual and spoken communication, from the way letters appear to the combination of sounds meant to signify a particular idea to the manner in which words are combined and formatted on a page.
• Language is a LEARNED phenomena, but our tendency toward using language appears ingrained
• The combination of visual and sound symbols are arbitrary (e.g. chien, canis, gao, dog, perro all mean the same thing, but look and sound nothing alike).
• Language can be extremely powerful; we considered "powerful" words (e.g., "no," "hate," "God," "Love," etc.) that evoke strong responses in us.
• Since all words (some more than others) can produce strong reactions, language must be considered along with the context it is used in. For example, consider the n-word. A horrible, vile word, but it there is a difference between a student reading the word aloud when covering Huckleberry Finn in class, and another person casually using the word to describe someone he or she sees in the hallway. The differing contexts bring us to very different understandings about the speakers and their motivations, though the word itself has not changed.
• Language helps to shape reality by limiting the thoughts we are capable of articulating. That sounds weird, but to get an idea of what this means, try describing the specific details of a complex painting using terms related to sports. You'll start seeing the painting [and sports] differently after a while.
• Language, though it helps to shape our realities, just as math and science do, can be made malleable (changeable), in a way that math and science cannot. Words change meaning over time (e.g., "cool" in 19th century meant cold in regard to temperature or distant in emotional response; now, while it still carries those meanings, it most often means "nifty." And "nifty" didn't even exist in the 19th century.)

In short, language-- a learned set of rules governing communication-- is a powerful tool, and our use of it defines the way in which we interact with the world around us.

2. Why do we tell stories?

• To teach values, morals, traditions, beliefs and culture
• To entertain
• To maintain a connection to the past
• To learn about human experience (love, loss, justice, love, death, family, adversity, etc.)
• To bring our own beliefs into sharper focus
• To visualize and plan who we might be in the future
• To understand (or misrepresent) others not like us
• To define our connections to others and order our social world (we'll tell a funny story for a friend or a mean story about an enemy to elicit certain behaviors/feelings in others; politicians, advertisers, etc. do the same thing on a different scale)

What stories do we tell?

• Hero conquers the monster
• Stranger comes to town
• Boy meets girl
• The Quest
• Rags to riches
• Voyage to & return from alien world
• Comedy/Satire
• Tragedy
• Rebellion
• Mystery
• Coming of age (bildungsroman)

It is hard (perhaps impossible) to imagine any story we'd want to hear or see performed not falling under one of these plot types. In fact, we're predictable in the kinds of stories we seek. Consider the following plot possibilities and what kind of stories they'd make:

• Good things happening to a good person (boring, and annoying)
• Bad things happening to a good person (we can learn about how to deal with adversity from that, because we identify with the situation on some level)
• Good things happening to a bad person (unbearably unjust)
• Bad things happening to a bad person (there's something Roman Coliseum-y about this; while it helps us cement our views of good and evil, it doesn't satisfy in quite the same way)

We actually seek the plots that will confirm or enhance our understanding of things. When we are more confident in ourselves and our values (and more competent as scholars), we sometimes seek out stories that challenge our views.

In short, stories help us understand and define our place in that world.

THE POINT

There is no society from the dawn of humankind that has not used language and has not told stories. What has changed are the way in which we tell the stories (e.g. Greeks could recite epic poetry like The Odyssey from memory and we watch movies on our iPod nanos), and the experiences we bring to them. And with the new experience and methods, we ask age old questions for new answers: how does the world behave? How am I to behave in the world? What should my purpose be here?

English class--comprised of you, me, and the stories-- is a close investigation of the rules of language and of what stories teach. How do we shape language, and how does language shape us? If we treat our investigations seriously and with respect, the story has the power to elevate both of us, making us better people and our group experience more worthwhile. If we come to the story looking only for entertainment, or hardly looking, the story becomes a stumbling block in our relationship with one another and as a group.

Check out this article for a scientific explanation of our love of a good story.