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[00:00:00] Dan: Hey, thanks so much for coming and joining me today. We're gonna be chatting today about the top half of Bloom's taxonomy. In our last episode, we talked about the bottom end of blooms, where we talked about remembering, understanding and applying today. We're gonna hit the top half. So we look at analyzing, evaluating and creating.
[00:00:19] Dan: But before we get into that, I wanna just quickly remind. Tomorrow. I am beginning my effective teaching series, which is a three part video series where I'm gonna help you to improve your effectiveness, both in the classroom and out of the classroom. This series aims to help you reduce your workload. It aims to help you increase the effectiveness of what you do in your classroom so that your students are learning more effectively.
[00:00:47] Dan: They're. Fast start learning more efficiently, but also learning better. And then we are also gonna talk about how to set yourself up for a career in teaching as an effective teacher. If that sounds like something you're interested in, please head over to teachers pd.net/et series. If you are watching this on YouTube that be a link underneath the video, you can click that and go and register for that series.
[00:01:12] Dan: well today we're looking at blooms. We're at the top. We're looking at analyzing, we're looking at evaluating, we're looking at creating. And so let's start off by talking about analyzing. Now, analyzing for me is all about building connections. When I look up definitions for it, it says that that's kind of what it's about.
[00:01:31] Dan: It's about connections and relationships between things. And that is all about memory for me. I think, as you think about our last few episodes and even the little series I did about how students learn memory is all about building connections. You know, there's no nothing in our brains that we can recall that isn't a connection of neurons, right?
[00:01:56] Dan: That a memory is multiple neurons connected and the pathway is between them. And. For us when we are doing an analyze for me, that's all about memories. It's all. Finding all those connections and making them really clear for our students and helping them to build those connections in their brain to help them to become more successful in their learning.
[00:02:17] Dan: And so, as we're analyzing stuff with our students, yeah. This is gonna take time, allow students to build this up over, you know, at least a whole lesson, maybe even over a whole week where they're. Finding the relationships between what they're learning and, you know, it could be between that and life around them.
[00:02:35] Dan: It could be that and prior knowledge, which is the most important thing to predict what they can possibly learn anyway. And so, as we do analyzing, right, that's when you're doing mind map, that's when you're doing things that really highlight these connections that. Between various pieces of content. And sometimes it can be the connections between, you know, really closely related stuff that you're actually presenting together because that's part of what they need to do is analyze stuff to understand it.
[00:03:03] Dan: When we move on to an evaluate evaluation is about forming your criteria to come up with some kind of judgment. This is like when you're justifying something, you're gonna provide evidence to back yourself up. And this requires students to develop some empathy. So they actually. Considering other students' perspectives on a particular topic.
[00:03:25] Dan: Uh, you know, I teach a lot of health stuff and personal development. And so when a student comes and they are struggling to understand, or to evaluate something like, you know, the, a marriage or a family and they have to actually have to start to consider other people's perspectives. They've gotta think about, you know, your family is different to my family.
[00:03:48] Dan: What's your culture say? And. Coming up with that broader kind of empathy by actually understanding where other people are coming from, that enables them to come up with better criteria for their judgements, that they're gonna make about the effectiveness of it, or about the depth at which they can actually understand something cuz evaluating it.
[00:04:07] Dan: This is, it has these judgment element. And so they have to be able to look at something, you know, if it's a family or whatever, that's not a great topic to choose for this one. But if it's a. , uh, they can still evaluate the effectiveness of a family or how well that family is working by coming up with criteria.
[00:04:24] Dan: And that criteria might be slightly adjusted depending on what culture they're from or depending on the actual, you know, dynamics within or the people within that family. Cuz maybe it's a single child, family, or there's six children in that family. Or maybe there's a single parent. Maybe it's dad, maybe it's a mom, maybe it's grandparents who are raising the kids.
[00:04:44] Dan: And so they, and actually come out with better criteria by getting that empathy. I also find that in order to evaluate something where they've gotta build up their ability to discuss things. And so by identifying this as a precursor to evaluating, it means our students are going through and identifying the pros and cons.
[00:05:01] Dan: Right. So. Points four and points against that's what a discussion is all about. And so by doing that, it helps them to then come up with really good criteria and to make a really good judgment because they've got, oh, here are the points for it. Here are the points against it. And that means that this is actually how strong it is for this to work.
[00:05:18] Dan: And so that could be looking at, you know, the evidence for something in a piece of English literature, and whether. This theme is actually the main theme throughout the story. And so that you're looking at points four and against that as the major theme, what other themes could be there as the main theme, all that kind of stuff.
[00:05:35] Dan: And so they're actually coming up with a criteria to make a judgment about that. And so to evaluate requires them to discuss, to have empathy and to come up with their criteria that they're gonna. For that judgment that they're going to be making. And I think that's super important for us to kind of build that out and to scaffold that for them, so that they're really building on the ability to understand more broadly and to see the points for and against as they come up to making that evaluation.
[00:06:04] Dan: now the last bit of blooms is at the top. This is create now blooms will tell you that you can't get to create, unless you've done the other ones, right? You have to do the remembering, the understanding, the applying, the analyzing, the evaluating, then you move up to creating. And so it's important for us as teachers to really remember that these things are in an order.
[00:06:25] Dan: Right. Our students need to be able to remember things before they can really understand and apply things. Well, for me, I find that a little bit confusing, cuz for me, understanding requires applying, but that's just a definition thing really. So we could go with understanding, applying, and then they've got, they need to be able to apply before they can analyze, you know, and that's.
[00:06:46] Dan: The, the need for all those connections evaluating. Cause you're about to see those connections to be able to make a proper evaluation of something before you then create and to create is to manipulate things. You're, you're manipulating relationships. You're manipulating how well things work in order to create something new, right?
[00:07:04] Dan: So maybe you've evaluated it and you've got, I can improve on that by doing this and this. And so we do this through, you know, inquiry in our classrooms. We can enable our students. I spend plenty of time going through and evaluating and, uh, analyzing things, coming up with some kind of conclusion there where they say, oh, this isn't good enough.
[00:07:26] Dan: And then they can then go through a, um, a creation or design process where they're coming up with something new that could improve upon what's actually in front of them. And that's the creation process that's happening for our students. And. Actually enabling our students to build up to that is super important.
[00:07:44] Dan: Well, for your action this week, I would love for you to actually plan a full week where you're going to hang out with your students at this top end of blooms. Because one of the things that happens when you get to the. Higher order thinking skills or the deep thinking is that the students require time.
[00:08:00] Dan: And if we don't give them that time with us, so with us around to help them to give them feedback for them to have their friends and stuff, to bounce things off, if we don't actually allow the time in class and to do that, they're never gonna get to the point where they can really do it properly. And so I really encourage you to allow up to a week to just go through this kind of a process at the top end of blooms with your students, make sure they've already got the bottom, right?
[00:08:23] Dan: They can't do the top without the bottom. So make sure you're doing that. It takes time and we put with plenty of feedback, you can help them get to do self-evaluations up and you can help them to get to that point where they're really well competent and able to create stuff ready for that. Well, guys, that is it for this week.
[00:08:40] Dan: I hope you enjoyed this little episode and the two part series on blooms. If you are interested in that effective teaching series, it's all. Helping you reduce your workload, helping you to be effective in your classroom and setting you up to be a lifelong career effective teaching teacher. Right? Uh, then head over to teachers pd.net/et series.
[00:09:05] Dan: I would love to see you there. It starts tomorrow. The first video is out. So make sure you register today. I will chat to you there and see you there. Hopefully. Otherwise I'll send you another podcast episode next week.
