Group items tagged

"It is Benjamin Bloom's belief that the entry point to learning is the acquisition of knowledge. He postulates that a solid foundation of terms, facts, theories, and skills is the educational base that will allow the mind to evaluate information effectively and inspire innovation. Our schools' emphasis on and devotion to standards-based instruction and high-stakes testing reflects a desire for students to become proficient at memorizing terms, and facts as well as and mastering various sets of skills. "

"Benjamin Blooms' second stage, "understanding" occurs when new learning connects to prior knowledge. At this point, students have the ability to make sense of what they have read, viewed, or heard and can explain this understanding clearly and succinctly to others. This particular learning stage balances precariously between communicating understanding and expressing opinion. Here the student demonstrates the ability to identify the main idea, generalize new material, translate verbal content into a visual form, transform abstract concepts into everyday terms, or make predictions."

"Bloom's Revised Taxonomy breaks each learning stage (remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create) into four separate levels of knowledge. These levels include the factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive. Together the levels of knowledge are making incremental movements from a factual understanding, to the personal command and realization of the learning process. The revised taxonomy also lists two cognitive processes within the applying stage: executing and implementing.1 These two processes illustrate the range of thinking skills possible within a stage. Executing requires the application of factual knowledge and refers to the ability to carry out learned procedures such as solving a long division problem. On the other hand, implementing reaches up into the metacognitive level and demands that students be able to apply learned skills to a task that initially appears to be an unrelated to prior learning experiences. "

Engaging the Eye Generation takes a fresh approach to infusing twenty-first century skills into the classroom.