Higher Level Thinking + Technology = Student Engagement

Helllllllo, world!  After our end-of-summer/back-to-school hiatus, we are back in action on the blog! If you are like us, the summer is full of exciting travel and professional development.  Come mid-August, we are ready (for the most part) to welcome a new group of students into our classrooms. Now that we have gotten to know our students, established our classroom procedures, and are in the swing of things at school, we are ready to turn our attention back to sharing our ideas with other educators and continuing to develop ourselves as life-long-learners.

Changes in Bloom's Taxonomy to reflect 21st century learning

Every year, the Illinois Reading Council hosts its annual conference to bring together passionate educators from all over the state and country to share literacy best practices.  This year, the two of us created a new presentation with our colleague Kirby to focus on how we integrate higher level thinking tasks from the top of Bloom's Taxonomy with technology in order to engage students and enrich their learning experience.  Since Bloom's Taxonomy was revised in 2001 to reflect 21st century changes in learning, we focused on analyzing, evaluating, and creating within the contexts of our middle school English and math classrooms.

Meg, Jamie, and Kirby are ready to present at IRC 2015

Kirby, a sixth grade English teacher, highlighted how she uses Newsela to find quality nonfiction texts for her students.  Her students analyze the part-to-whole relationship of the text structure.  Using the Notability app on their iPads allows them to annotate to help them with this process.  They then evaluate how an author crafts his/her writing to communicate information before creating their own online article via KidBlog or creating their own "how to" video using iMovie.

Jamie, who is a seventh grade English teacher, has her students analyze mentor texts in the form of blog posts.  In breaking down these mentor texts, students are able to see the parts of a quality blog post which ultimately prepare them to create their own blog posts on Kidblog.  Her students also evaluate book reviews on GoodReads and then use these book reviews as mentor texts prior to creating their own book reviews on GoodReads and/or book trailers using Animoto.

Great turn out for our session!

I (Meg), the math teacher of the trio, have my students use Noteability to help them document their hands-on experiences in class as they analyze part-to-whole relationships between numbers, for example how the side length of a cube relates to its volume and the math term "cubing a number". They can capture photographs of their manipulatives, write text to caption their images, and record audio as they turn-and-talk to a neighbor to summarize their analysis.  Students are able to evaluate the best problem solving strategies as they record screencasts of their math strategies using the Explain Everything app. Students are able to create math picture books using the Book Creator app to integrate the writing process with their math knowledge.

How do you use higher level thinking tasks in your classroom?  We would love to hear your ideas!