Tag Archives: Bloom's Taxonomy

Theory into Practice: Blooming the Curriculum with One Word – “So…”

Posted on by
Reply

Tested practices created from research-based theories give teachers the best instructional opportunities to cause all children to learn.

It is easy to think of teaching and learning as linear. We teach and children learn one thing then another and another. Learning is an additive like train cars on a railroad line running through a classroom. Each car arrives with facts and skills to be taught and learned before it leaves the classroom/station, and the next train car of facts and skills arrives. There is more truth in this analogy that teachers want to admit. We change this perception with one word – “so.” All a teacher needs to do to move teaching and learning from a linear to a geometric design is to ask “So, what can/will/should you …” and teaching and learning launch vertically from children waiting for the next lesson to children doing higher orders of cognition with what they have already learned. It is blooming wonderfully!

What do we know?

The names of historic education and psychology theoreticians are fixed in our teacher preparation programs. Their names appear in texts and as footnote references. Piaget, Dewey, Vygotsky, Montessori, Skinner, Bruner, et al. Teacher licensing candidates learn to pair a name with a concept the historic person developed, take a test or write a paper acknowledging that person’s name and concept, and then allow the forgetting curve to move the name and theory into their memory fog. Who was that? What theory?

Stop doing this! Teaching and learning theories matter because theories give us road maps for how to transform schooling from linear – learn to test- to geometric – learn to think and do.

Benjamin Bloom, psychologist and pedagogue, gave us a systematic template to describe, assess, and classify educational goals. Bloom published his Taxonomy in 1956 and for decades teacher preparation schools taught Bloom’s cognitive domain, and six levels of cognition often called higher order thinking skills. Seventy years later, Bloom is still the go-to resource for describing and detailing levels of cognitive goals.

“So,” elevates your teaching and student learning.

The baseline of Bloom’s Taxonomy is the teaching and learning of background knowledge and a basic understanding of that knowledge. All children need to learn words that name and describe things in their world. So, we teach them to read and listen and build working vocabularies. Bloom categorizes the first goals of learning as level 1 – remembering and level 2 – understanding. A great deal of PreK-, 4K, and kindergarten involves experientially exposing children to words and facts and remembering and understanding.

In his research for his studies, Bloom saw that most classroom instruction at many grade levels was at level 1 and level 2 goals. Teachers used direct instruction to teach information for children to remember and describe. Teachers tested children, recorded learning scores, and began teaching the next lesson of information to be learned. Teaching and learning bobbled back and forth between remembering and understanding.

Bloom changed the goals of learning by interjecting “so what” into teaching. “So, what can you do with this information?” “So, how is this information like or unlike other information?” “So, which is a better choice in the use of this information?” And “So, what could you create from this information that is new and different?” Each of these questions is indicative of a higher level of cognition requiring children to think differently to answer the question. Bloom labeled these questions and placed them in a roster of unique learning goals.

Bloom’s Taxonomy: Each is a different category of learning goals needing distinct kinds of cognitive thinking. The goal is to –

  • Remember
  • Understand
  • Apply
  • Analyze
  • Evaluate
  • Create.

These goals are not sequential as in a continuum. The first two goals – remembering and understanding are goals for creating background knowledge – necessary for all learning to follow. Later learning builds upon the breadth and depth of a child’s foundational background knowledge. This tells us why children in the primary grades receive extensive direct instruction in reading, ELA, math, science, and social studies. And why direct instruction of required information fills the first chapters and units of middle school and high school instruction. Knowing things is necessary for the later goals of thinking about and working with that knowledge.

To build the goal of remembering, teachers use questions like –

  • Identification – What is the capital of Wisconsin? Of France?
  • Definition – What is the meaning of the word precipitation?
  • Listing – List the three branches of the US federal government?
  • Recall – When did the Civil War take place? When did the first man walk on the moon?
  • Recognition – Which of these formulas is correct for the area of a square?

The work of identifying, defining, listing, recalling, and recognizing words expands a child’s working vocabulary in their seeing, hearing, writing, speaking, and imaging more new words. Each question requires a child to write or speak a word in a different way that builds memory. Five to seven uses of the word reinforce short-term memory, and 15 to 17 different uses reinforce long-term memory.

Parallel to remembering words is understanding – the ways that people talk about and use words. The traditional model for remembering and then understanding is to “Say the word, spell the word, and use the word in a sentence.”

To build the goal of understanding, teachers use questions like –

  • Classify – Tell me the kinds of animals eat meat? … eat plants?
  • Describe – Describe what a Green Bay Packer would see standing in the middle of Lambeau Field just before the start of an NFL game.
  • Discuss – Tell me why World War Two is labeled a world war.
  • Translate – Rewrite this word problem into a mathematical equation.

Understanding requires definition of a word and opens a child to word families of synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. Typical five-year olds have a vocabulary of 10,000 words. Once in school, their vocabulary grows by 3,000 to 5,000 words each year. The rate of vocabulary growth continues until typical high school students know about 50,000 words. The next learning goals give power the words a child knows and understands.

It is important to remember that, although application, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis goals are not sequential, a child’s experience in one will have tangential benefit to the others.

After securing children in meeting the goals of remembering and understanding, a teacher can instruct them in exploring what a person can do with the information learned. This goal is application. True application happens when children use the information or skill or rule to answer a question or solve problem they have not seen before – application requires new contexts.

To build the goal of application, teachers use questions like –

  • Solving – If the hypotenuse is three, what are the lengths of the sides of the triangle.
  • Stimulating – If you were an actor on stage, how would you react to applause after you deliver your lines? Or after the end of the play?
  • Demonstrating – What are examples that show this rule works in the real world?
  • Implementing – If you only had two tools – a scissors and a stapler – and a sheet of cardboard, show us how you would construct a box.

The goal of application is to produce something – a performance, an explanation, a diagram, or a product. A teacher can present children with a “messy” problem or a mystery that includes the words “what if.” These words invite the child to use all they know to solve, react, prove, or implement what they know and to produce something in a new situation. Often the product is an answer on a test requiring a child to consider what they know in an unanticipated word problem. In a real-world context, the ability to apply is the goal of most adult work life problems.

A different goal for learning is analysis. As the goal of application is to produce something in a new context, the goal of analysis is to dissect information looking for patterns, the relationships between parts, and hidden meanings.

To build the goal of analysis, teachers ask questions like –

  • Relationships – What is the connection between global warming and the strength and patterns of hurricanes?
  • Evidence – Which parts of this answer are based upon facts, and which parts are based upon opinion?
  • Categorizing – How would you classify these statements as causes or outcomes from the American Revolution?
  • Deconstructing – Separate this poem into its elements.

Analysis teaches children to be critical thinkers and to question and inquire into the nature of information. Teachers show children how to use charts, diagrams, and tables to show, organize, and rationalize similarities and differences. Children think and reason like historians and scientists. They study an event for its underlying causes and later effects. They guess how the absence of an underlying cause or sparking event may have changed history. Children chart and map chemical reactions to understand how elements relate and react to each other. They chart and map climatic events to understand forecasting. As application creates products, analysis dissects information into its critical attributes.

Educators gave an acronym to Bloom’s categorization of analysis, evaluation, and synthesis goals. They ar labeled as HOTS – higher order thinking skills. Ironically, HOTS should be the dominant goals of secondary education, but the curricular calendar relegates them to specific upper-level courses and a fraction of the school year. Best practice is for children at all grade levels, even 4K-primary, to be given goals in evaluative thinking. Teachers give children a rule or a “yardstick” and ask them to make a evaluation of information. For example, “Our rules say that you will quietly form a single file line when it’s time to come into the building after outdoor recess. What kind of behaviors would not be appropriate for your being “quiet” and in a “single file line?” Young children can do analysis.

Evaluation is making a critical judgment based upon evidence. The key to teaching children to evaluate is giving them a rule or a measurement against which they can make a judgment and provide evidence to support their decision.

To build the goal of evaluation, teachers ask questions like –

  • Judging – Based on First Amendments Rights, should this writer be banned from publishing opinions in the local newspaper?
  • Defending – Do you agree with the historical proposition that a “man’s home is his castle” and justifies the use of deadly force?
  • Prioritizing – Given that your school has limited finances, which of these curricular programs should be exempted from budget reductions?
  • Critiquing – Looking at the past list of Booker Award winners, which of these books has the best likelihood of winning the next award?

Evaluation requires understanding and analysis. Evaluation is not asking for opinions. “Do you like this abstract drawing of a barnyard?” asks for an opinion. Saying “This is an abstract painting of a barnyard. How and how well has the painter used elements of abstraction to tell you the subject of the painting is a barnyard?” asks for judgment with supporting evidence. To make this judgment, children must first understand the vocabulary of art. They must understand the definition of abstract art, and they must understand the critical attributes of abstraction. Then, they must be able to examine and dissect a piece of art by identifying the specific attributes of abstraction exhibited in the art. Finally, they must put their judgment and evidence in a coherent explanation. This is HOTS.

An evaluative assignment takes more time to prepare, more time and consideration for children to complete, and significant time for a teacher to assess and respond to a child’s supported judgment. In addition, every child may make a valid judgment with differing evidence resulting in all children succeeding in an assignment that took a lot of time. And this explains why children have limited lessons pursuing the goal of evaluation. HOTS take time and the curricular calendar has limited time.

The goal of creating also requires assimilation of other learning goals. Creation requires children to examine their knowledge of information, their analysis of critical attributes, and their evaluation of the qualities of what needs to be created to engage in creation. Creating is not just applying in a new situation but the making of something new from what is known to fit a given situation. Creating also is using evaluation to determine the “best” elements for the new creation.

To build the goal of creating, teachers ask questions like –

  • Design – Design a family home for five persons that would survive fire, hurricane, and criminal intrusion. The home will be in California or South Carolina near the ocean and surrounded by woods. You are not limited by cost or material selection.
  • Construct – Given toothpicks and a bottle of Elmer’s Glue, build a bridge that will support a five-pound weight.
  • Reorganize – How would you reorganize the baseball, softball, football, and soccer fields on our campus to require 20% less square feet of area?
  • Develop – Create a story board depicting how five children stranded on an island would create rules for their survival until they could be rescued one week later.

Lessons requiring the goal of creation attach easily to STEM curriculum, technology education, and career development. They also are precursors to real world applications of school-based education.

The Big Duh!

Benjamin Bloom gave us a structure for teaching children to develop different kinds of thinking, of cognition. His taxonomy is a scaffold we can use to ensure that all children learn more than just a recall of information. Using his scaffold of goals, we can cause children to “think and do”. Bloom is worth remembering and his theory of learning goals is a tool for optimizing every child’s education.

I encourage and challenge every teacher to analyze and evaluate their annual curriculum to ensure the teaching of HOTS at all grade levels and in all subjects.

Theory to Practice: Teach for Retention or Forget Teaching It. Your Students Will.

Posted on by
Reply

I said it. Students heard it. Students will remember it. Not really. Educators assume or expect students to remember, but assumptions are not facts. Remembering what a teacher said is a struggle between working memory and brain dumping. If there is not an overt effort to retain what is heard, seen, or perceived, the working brain will dump what was heard, seen, or perceived within 30 seconds. That is a fact. A teacher who wants children to remember what they have been taught must know and practice principles of retention theory. If not, teaching is a wind that blows through children’s minds leaving little that was learned.

What do we know?

Retention is the unspoken assumption in everything we do in school. We want children to remember what we teach them. We test the heck out of students as an assurance that they remember their instruction. We reward children with high test scores and create tiers of intervention and remediation for children with low test scores. Test scores have become our measurement of retained memory. In fact, this pathway almost ensures that instructed learning will not be retained. It is based on false principles and practices.

Let us remember what we know about remembering.

  • The brain is bombarded with thousands of words, images, sounds, and perceptions every hour. The brain is not designed to and will not remember every input it receives.
  • If the brain does not consider/mentally repeat a word, image, sound, or perception it is lost within 30 seconds. The 30-Second Rule is reality.
  • The brain considers to seven to ten bits of information at a time – there is a constant pass through of information in immediate recall. The 30-second rule constantly moves the brain to “next” and “next.”
  • The Forgetting Curve also is a natural function of the brain’s need to be moving on to what is next in life. We forget 50% of received information within one hour and 70% within 24 hours without overt actions to reinforce the retention of that information.

Humans innately forget. If we want to students to remember, we must overtly use practices that cause them to remember. Retention theory must be embedded in every instructional lesson and unit.

Retention Theory

Madeline Hunter named five principles that cause students to remember instruction.

Meaning. One way to combat the 30-Second Rule is to make unfamiliar information meaningful. Brain retention improves when it knows that unfamiliar information connects to what a student already knows or the student’s personal interests. Personal interest is huge in reinforcing memory. She called these connections “anticipatory sets” or ways to overtly move the student toward a positive anticipation about a new lesson. This prepares the brain for memory.

Feeling Tone. Every classroom involves emotional theater, and teachers set the positive, negative, or neutral vibe in which teaching and learning happens. A teacher who has skills of affective and behavioral empathies creates a warm, inviting, and positive atmosphere. The lack empathetic skills and teacher-dominated class time builds hesitant, non-participative student responses in a negative climate. Positive and negative feeling tones are real – teachers know it when they are in one or the other, but do not always know their causations. A neutral feeling tone arises when there is a perceived indifference to whether children learn or not.

Degree and accuracy of Initial Learning. Both correct and incorrect learning lead to memory. Correct learning can be reinforced leading to long-term memory. However, incorrect learning needs to be identified, eliminated, and replaced with correct learning. Although interventions are required, they cloud reinforcement as the brain processes incorrect information out and correct information in. Therefore, when teachers take time to ensure all children achieve high levels of understanding of new instruction before moving to independent practice, teachers are enhancing memory work and retention.

Practice Schedule. Practice does not make perfection, it makes permanence. Theories show that massed practice or “cramming” is effective for fast learning that leads to quick forgetting. In contrast, distributed practice episodes are the key to long-term retention. Practice in retrieving remembered information builds memory muscle and intervals between practice sessions build permanence.

Transfer. The goal of teaching and learning is knowing things that are worth knowing and that can be applied in various new ways, places, and times. Retention of prior learning is reinforced when it is recalled and used in new contexts, and new learning is better understood and remembered when new memories are extensions of older, successful memories. Transfer that connects learning connects memories.

What to do. Each of the following describes a strategy for building and reinforcing retention based upon retention theory.

  • Make information “sticky” and easier to remember. Information is not created equally. Some seems slippery and is hard to remember while other information, like tree sap that clings to fingers, seems sticky and is easier to remember. These strategies make information sticky.

Chunk it. Individual bits of information are hard to remember, but easier when chunked in meaningful groups or sequences or patterns. Chunking means remembering all the individual bits as one – it is easier to remember.

Show it. Research shows that human memory of images is better than memory of independent text or audio. A picture, a video, or a graphic gives the brain another dimension of unfamiliar information. The student sees the word and an image of the word or picks up a representation of the word. Things that can be handled and made tangible, are very memorable.

Add emotional or novelty context. The easiest emotions to embed in new learning are surprise, happiness, and fear. Children love things that go “bang” or have surprise endings. They associate the surprise and the information. All learners appreciate novelty – new things to experience. Just saying “You are the first students to …” makes whatever it is they do “sticky” in their memory.

Do it. Motor skills and experiences are stored in different areas of the brain from information. Teaching about graphing coordinates in math class creates information. Creating a grid on a soccer field and placing/locating things by their coordinates creates a know it/do it combination that is very sticky.

Conversely, there are ways to make information slippery and hard to remember. Avoid or eliminate slippery practices, like giving students lists of random numbers or facts to remember without any context for their memory, allowing passive listening without note taking or required verbal engagement, or giving students information that is highly similar/almost identical to prior information.

  • Use active not passive retrieval of information. Memory requires mental activity and working the information until it avoids the brain dump, becomes short-term memory, then long-term memory, and is transferred to give meaning and context to other information. Passive retrieval relies on a student’s initial interaction with the information and rereading or repeating the same initial interaction. Passive retrieval yields low grade memory retention and leads to very quick forgetting.

What Did You Miss? After first instruction, ask students to write all they know about what they learned. Allow ten minutes. This on-demand retrieval exposes what the student remembers and, when compared with the totality of the first instruction, what is missing.

Discriminating Retrieval. Give students an explanation of the first instruction but one that is missing some information. Ask students to fill in the missing information. This retrieval requires to brain to “work” to clinically retrieve, consider, and identify the parts of the information.

Practice testing and retesting. The strategy of pre-testing and post-testing most often are used to inform and assess instruction. Pre-testing and subsequent testing also work to build and reinforce memory. In any test, students reinforce what they correctly remember. Testing strengthens successful memory retrieval.

Feedback loops. Testing also provides feedback about what students do not know. Focused work on improved reading, listening, seeing, and experiencing of unknown or non-secured information builds new memories. The active work needed to correct misinformation and learn correct information mentally strengthens memorization of what is learned.

Mental refinement/teach back (Feynman Technique). One of the most active is also the strongest retrieval strategy. When students teach what they learned to others, they must consolidate and refine the information they know, construct it in their own words, and deliver the information in ways the others can learn. We often hear that the best way to learn something is to teach it; that also applies to memorization.

  • Spacing. The term “spacing” tells us that productive, active retrieval must is purposefully distributed not massed.       

Intervals. Research suggests these intervals for moving new information into short-term memory and short-term memory into long-term. First review = 24 hours after first instruction. Remember: Without active retrieval, 70% of first instruction is forgotten in 24 hours. Second review = one week later. Third review = one month later. Fourth review = 3-6 months later.

10-30% Rule. Research recommends the optimal gap between retrieval/practice sessions should be 10-30% of the time you want students to remember the information. If the final test is in one month, use practice exercises every 3 to 6 days. If the final test or performance is in one year, practice once each month. For classroom rules that cover a school year, test/practice every month of the school year.

Interleaving. Do not practice the same information/skill at every practice session. Test/practice just a part of the same information at one session and other parts at subsequent sessions. And include different types of information in each session. This requires students to mentally sort through the memory, mine that information, and retrieve specific memories.

Leitner or Box Method. Everyday include a brief retrieval of new information and things students are having difficulty remembering. Every 3 days include a retrieval of things students are shaky on in their memory. Once every week practice information all students can retrieve easily.

  • Layered mastery. Best practice is not the constant use of one active retrieval strategy. Like physical exercise, using one strategy repeatedly only makes that one type of memory stronger. Layered mastery creates a multi-month schedule of intervals for brain dumping, testing, teaching to others that causes students to retrieve information repeatedly, analyze the information, apply the information, evaluate the reliability and validity of information, and synthesize the information into new configurations. When teachers use Bloom’s Taxonomy to guide their use retention theory, they cause students to build their own retrieval systems.

The Big Duh!

The industrial model of teaching and learning in the United States makes curriculum a conveyor belt of information that teachers teach, and students try to learn. The high demands and constancy of our K-12 curriculum delivery do not include time and resources for meaningful information retention. We teach and test then teach and test something new. If we want students to know what they learn for more than one day or until the next quiz, we must understand and use retention theory and its research-based practices. If we do not teach students to build memory building and retrieval, we truly institutionalize forgetting.

Teach For Enduring and Expansive Learning Not Coverage. Know the Difference.

Posted on by
Reply

“Your teacher covered that last year” or “this semester we will cover” still rankles my professionalism as a teacher. Teaching for coverage means nominal teaching and learning. It means spending the least amount of time engaged in teaching and learning for the sake of topical accountability. Coverage teaching is like the proverbial river that is a mile wide and an inch deep – it emphasizes breadth without depth. In my naivety as a young educator I believed that if something was worth teaching it was worth learning well and that meant deeper teaching and learning. Conversely, why waste time and energy on teaching things we did not plan for children to learn well? I still believe this.

Years ago when I heard my principal or district curriculum leader talk of coverage, I assumed they were generalizing about the amount of information in any grade level of our social studies curriculum and the finite amount of instructional time in an academic year. But they weren’t. “You can’t teach everything in your curriculum with the same level of intensity” I was told. “So, cover it all.” It took me a long and troublesome time to understand this, however understanding did not mean accepting it.

There is a line between coverage and knowing and understanding.

Early on in teacher training, we are taught Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy. In the 1950s Bloom established six levels of thinking, learning, and understanding with labeling that helps us explain a rationale for teaching and learning designs. Seventy years later, I still like how Bloom helps me to add depth to the “wide river” of information we teach. The model below shows a revised taxonomy – the terms have been modified from Bloom’s original for clearer explanation of the cognitive levels.

bloom’s taxonomy revised – Higher order of thinking

Although there is a vertical dimension to the taxonomy, Bloom did not intend for all teaching to involve all six levels. Curriculum planners use the levels as goals for teaching and learning. Some learning, in fact most of what we learn, is meant to be at the remembering/understanding level of usage. Other learning is meant to be scaffolded into a variety of applications, or to inform careful analyses, or to evaluate options and opportunities, and to create original work. Though it looks like a ladder, a user does not use every rung to engage in higher order cognition. Instruction and learning can scaffold from understanding to analyzing, or evaluating, or creatin.

Coverage teaching is the act of “mentioning” without the explicit intention of remembering. There is a lot of mentioning in education. Synonyms for mentioning cause us to smile and acknowledge that teachers mention without teaching. When a teacher “alludes to, refers to, touches upon, hints at, speaks about briefly, broaches or introduces only,” that is mentioning. Children may or may not hear or read what a teacher mentions as an aside. Things that are mentioned are characterized as “things it is nice to know but it is okay not to know.” Like, the value of pi is abbreviated to 3.14. As an irrational number, Pi can be calculated out to an infinite number of numbers but who cares? A math teacher covers or mentions that fact but directly instructs that the usable value of pi is 3.14. Best practice does not include “mentions” in assessments of student learning, although there is a lot of bad practice in the field.

Coverage may be all the questions on Jeopardy that sound somewhat familiar but just will not come to mind.

I think of coverage as the blank space below the bottom of Bloom’s taxonomy; it is the noise in the world we are not intended to remember.

Remembering and understanding is the meat and potatoes of most teaching. The information – facts, data, concepts, generalizations, and skill sets we want children to know, we teach with high intention. In the language of backward design, if we intend to test children on something, we intend to teach it well so that it will be remembered and understood.

Direct instruction is one of many teaching strategies most often used when we teach for remembering and understanding.

Children learn the alphabet and numbers, sight words and number facts early as foundational knowledge. In school we use direct instruction to drill and practice and ensure memory of these. Retention theory drives our teaching for remembering – we use immediate drill and practice/repetition to strengthen short-term memory and interval practice over time to ensure what is learned is retained and recalled in long-term memory. In a spiraled social studies curriculum, we teach US History in elementary, middle school, and high school because we want all children to know their national stories. Repetition and elaboration cause remembered learning.

Remembering is a student’s identical retelling of information or identical demonstration of what was taught. We require correct and complete retelling.

Understanding is explaining what was taught with fidelity in the student’s own words and doing the skill with fidelity in the student’s own style. Understanding is using what is remembered and making an inference about it or summarizing it in simpler language or combining several pieces of information into meaningful statement that keeps the significance and essence of what is being combined.

There also is a line between knowing and understanding what we learn and the rest of Bloom – what comes next is the so what of education.

Separating the noise of information from the teaching of remembering and understanding, gets us to the “so what” levels of Bloom where what was learned is applied, analyzed, evaluated, and built upon creatively. These four Bloom levels give us the rationale for why teaching for remembering and understanding are such a large part of our school calendar. Without foundational memory about stars, planets, moons, suns, constellations, galaxies, and a universe(s), nothing we see in the sky above us would make sense. Space would just be space. Lifesaving surgery would be butchery. Agriculture and manufacturing would just be guessing work.

Other teaching strategies become available when students have a knowledge and understanding of foundational information and skills. I use the C3 Framework for social studies as an example of instructing above the remembering and understanding line. C3 (College, Career, Civic Life) uses an inquiry process for students to investigate, expand and integrate their knowledge of civics, economics, geography, history, and the behavioral sciences.

“The C3 Framework, like the Common Core Standards, emphasizes the acquisition and application of knowledge to prepare students for college, career, and civic life. It intentionally envisions social studies instruction as an inquiry arc of interlocking and mutually reinforcing elements that speak to the intersection of ideas and learners.” C3 uses “questions to spark curiosity, guide instruction, deepen investigations, acquire rigorous content, and apply knowledge and ideas in real world settings…”

https://www.socialstudies.org/standards/c3

This is not coverage teaching!

Parallel to C3, curricula in every school subject, from art to woodworking, builds upon information and skills students learn at the remembering and understanding levels of instruction. The front of a refrigerator in most student homes is covered with student drawings and finger paintings. Over time, shelves and walls display how student application of basic information and skills blossoms into more intricate and sophisticated art. Student art displayed in local galleries, libraries, and art shows illustrates how student artists apply of fundamental concepts and skills, analyze and interpret subjects, and create new and original art.

Tech ed students manufacture, ag students grow and cultivate, computer science students program and engage in robotics, ELA writers craft poems and stories, and marketing ed students create businesses, apply accounting, create and manage product, lead and supervise personnel in the pursuit of economic growth. Once students know and understand, they can pursue their personal interests for a lifetime.

Know and be the difference.

There is so much in a teacher’s annual curriculum and so little time that it is easy to fall into the coverage mode of teaching. But why? In today’s world, coverage learning is what any child can achieve using Google or AI.

Two centuries ago, teachers were the source of information and applied learning. A century ago, students could read books for information; it was teacher directed and interpreted learning that moved children to young adults ready for college or work. Today, information sources abound, so much so that it hard to know information from noise. Today it takes a teacher to forge information into memory and understanding. And it takes a teacher to guide, monitor, and mentor how students illustrate and expand their learning. Well-conceived and instructed learning remains a springboard for life’s successes.

There is no time or place today for coverage teaching.

We Are Born To Hear; We Must Be Taught To Listen

Posted on by
Reply

“Are you hearing me?”.  Right question.  Humans begin hearing sounds, including human voices, in the womb.  Unless impaired, hearing, like seeing, is an innate characteristic of humans.  We are made to hear the noise that surrounds us every day. 

“Are you listening to me?”.  Another right question.  Listening is an acquired skill that the person you are speaking to may not have mastered.  Given the noise a person hears in their immediacy, it is an assumption that you are being listened to.  There is a huge difference between hearing and listening.

“Are you actively listening to me?”.  A better question.  But, “maybe not” is a very common answer.

As educators, the issue we face is how to teach hearers to become listeners and listeners to become active listeners.  If we believe in natural learning, we can allow a hearing child to wander through life in the belief that experience creates listening skills.  The skills of listening are in her and just need time and place to become effective everyday tools.  That may happen, but many adults today demonstrate untrained listening characteristics.  They hear.  They recognize the source or speaker.  They may acknowledge the topic of the speaker.  Then, they fade into being untrained listeners.  Their focus wanders, they insert own ideas, they start to create a rebuttal before the speaker has finished, and their thinking pursues unrelated tangents.  Some of the unschooled just shut down when they are asked to listen because they don’t know how. 

Listening is an acquired skill we need to teach to children.

What is listening?

“Listening begins by hearing a speaker producing the sound to be listened to.  Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act.  People are always hearing, most of the time subconsciously.  Listening is done by choice.  It is the interpretative action taken by someone in order to understand, and potentially make sense of, something one hears”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listening

Why should we listen instead just hearing?

Listening and seeing are the primary ways people gather information.  This is one of the reasons Helen Keller’s stories is so meaningful.  She was deaf and blind.  She did not hear or see and was unable to learn from these two essential senses.  With instruction, her brain learned to associate meaning through touch and smell and associate Braille dots with letters and words.  She truly was taught to “listen” to non-sounds.  Almost all of us take our hearing and seeing for granted.  However, without learning how to listen and to discern listening from hearing, we also are disabled in our ability to learn from our sense of hearing.

There are other good reasons to become good listeners.

  • Good listeners are more likable. Individuals with strong listening skills are present in the conversation. People who listen with focus are often perceived as more likable.
  • Good listeners build stronger relationships. Communication is not a one-way street. Good listeners show interest, ask open-ended questions, and acknowledge what’s being said. This helps reduce misunderstandings and builds stronger relationships.
  • Good listeners have a clearer understanding of the topics being discussed. Individuals with refined listening skills seek to fully understand a speaker’s message. They pay attention to both verbal and nonverbal cues and ask for clarification when needed.

https://online.maryville.edu/blog/types-of-listening/

What do we know?

Parents are a child’s first teachers of listening skills.  With their first “Say ‘Mama/Dada”, parents teach an infant to associate sounds and words with a desired meaning.  A parent says a word and coos to give it meaning, or holds up a toy and names it, or points to food on a spoon and names it.  They speak “baby talk” or “parentese” to encourage their baby to make a desired association.  Most parents do not have training in this; they are not taught how to teach their child to listen.  They do what they remember being done for them, or what family members tell them to do.  Others talk with their young parent peers.  In general, infants from birth to pre-school or instructional daycare are subjected to several years of popular wisdom-informed parenting.

The Science of Early Learning provides 22 techniques for parents to try in their efforts to move their baby from hearers of sounds to a baby who is building skills as a listener.  A search of the literature, including the tenth edition of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, provides a plethora of resources for parents to teach their children to be listeners. 

How to Talk to Babies

By age 4, children reflect many of their parents’ listening characteristics.  This comes as conflicting news for many parents, because in their multiple family roles they are not always aware that an infant is listening to their every word.  Children hear us even when we do not want to be heard.  An infant’s auditory vocabulary is influenced by and mirrors the words, vocabulary, sentence structures, and dialects their parents or their older siblings use.  Babies soak up almost everything they see and hear a parent do because they have no filtering mechanisms.

When infants do not begin to micmic parents and siblings, there is worry that hearing may be impaired. 

That is why schools are mandated through Child Find activities to use auditory testing to verify a child’s hearing

In Wisconsin, schools, daycares, pre-schools, and local physicians partner to inform young parents about the Child Find activities of local elementary schools.  One of the screenings typical of a Child Find appointment is a hearing assessment.  Teachers work with parents in the primary school when either believes that a student/child has difficulty hearing.  Testing and a diagnosis can lead to further testing and perhaps to special education service and accommodations.

https://dcf.wisconsin.gov/files/childcare/pdg/lceymeetings/2022-08-04-lcey-handout-early-childhood.pdf

What do schools do to teach listening skills?

Who at school teaches children to be listeners?  Incidentally, we may think school bus drivers are at the frontline of teaching children to listen because they are the first adult to greet a child each school day. Be clear, drivers want children to listen but they do not teach listening skills.  A drivers’ first priority is bus driving and student safety, and she/he does not typically speak instructionally but in an directing voice. 

Schools are mandated to teach children to listen and do so indirectly and directly.  One of a 4K-K teacher’s first action each morning is gaining student attention, channeling them from all the noise surrounding them as they get out of a family car or school bus, enter the school, put their things on hallway hooks or in cubbies or lockers, and enter their classroom.  The sounds of their classmates surround them.  Children hear their teacher say, “Sit down.  Eyes on me.  Give me your ears”.  And so, school listening instruction begins.

Veteran kindergarten teachers look like magicians to parents of 4-year-olds gathered for Kindergarten round ups and orientations.  They efficiently quiet squirming kids and boisterous children as easily as they herd cats.  For most veterans, the use of curated commands, signals, words, voice, body language, and attitude over time work to change behaviors and make children more amenable listeners.  Effective teaching at all levels incorporates myriads of indirect communications that move a hearing child to a listening student.

https://www.fayschool.org/kindergarten-readiness/six-strategies-to-teach-kids-to-listen

The mandate for direct instruction derives from our state’s adapting the Common Core ELA standards into Wisconsin’s ELA standards.  All children are to be instructed in listening, as well as reading, writing, and speaking.  The Wisconsin DPI standards place listening and speaking in the context of effective communications.  Schools are mandated to instruct children in how to listen and in how to speak that causes them to be active and “productive communicators” in a wide variety of school and life circumstances.

https://www.coreknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/CK_CCSS_ELAAlignment.pdf

This sayeth the mandate –

“Speaking and Listening Standards – Introduction

These standards are directed toward developing students’ abilities to productively participate in communicative exchanges. Productive participation means that students are able to communicate in large group, small group, and one-on-one exchanges with varied audiences, for varied purposes, and in varied situations; can respond to and develop what others have said; can contribute accurate, relevant information; and can analyze and synthesize a multitude of ideas in various domains. Students must have ample opportunities to take part in a variety of conversations and communicative exchanges in order to practice and apply these standards. Some standards repeat from grade-level to grade-level in recognition of the fact that students’ understandings develop and deepen over time. The ultimate goal of these standards is that students are able to understand and make flexible choices in their use of language in order to meet their communicative goals with varied audiences, for varied purposes, and in varied situations.”

https://dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/ela/resources/Standards%20Listening.pdf

Each phrase in the above introduction points to a facet of effective communication and the last sentence poses the capstone – to meet communicative goals with varied audiences, for varied purposes, and in varied situations.  Additionally, the fluid use of the word “varied” causes almost all listening skills  instruction to be embedded in subject, content, or skills instruction.  The context is listening within the instruction of reading or math or art or PE.  Seldom do teachers provide naked listening skill instruction devoid of a context for listening to something to be learned.

Elementary teachers focus early instruction of listening skills, so children learn to listen in these multiple school situations:

  • Audience – one-to-one communications, small group, large group.
  • Purpose – listening for directions, information, entertainment, conversation.
  • Situations – casual, focused, highly important, emergencies.
  • Responding based upon purpose – repeat what is heard, interpret what is heard, personalize what is heard,
  • When choices are available, be able to make a choice based upon what has been heard.extend

Teachers prepare and move children from one learning activity to another many times during a school day.  Routines are normalized and expectations for student listening are essential.  Teachers use routine signals to alert children to listen.  They may flick the classroom lights on and off, use a chime, or a buzzer.  The concept is that the signal alerts children to listen.  Once alerted to listen, a teacher focuses students to listen for “who is to do what, how, when, and why”.  Twenty or thirty minutes later, another signal is used, students are alerted to listen, and the class moves into another activity. 

Many listening skills are universal for school children.  Given the age of elementary learners, a great deal of instructional time is committed to group expectations and how an individual student in a group or classroom listens.  One college’s teacher prep program stresses the “Three As of listening – attitude, attention, adjustment.”  Teachers must shape children’s behavior first to an attitude of community.  A recognition that all classmates matter is a huge first step for a 4K-K child.  Once teachers have each child moving from “me” to “we”, the teacher creates, uses and reinforces strategies for gaining student visual and auditory attention.  We tend to pay attention to what we are looking at and that attention helps us to block out the noise so we can focus on the sounds coming from the person being seen.  In evolving from hearing to focused listening a child is ready to adjust to what is being said, asked, or directed.

Put into context, the routine above is used to prepare children for whole group activities, like recess or lunch.  Listening routines also are used to prepare students for reading group instruction, or individual work time at interest centers in the classroom. 

https://www.centenaryuniversity.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Triple-A-Listening-Supplemental-Reading.pdf

Ready to listen is not the same as listening

Hearing to listen is a first step.  Listening for a purpose is a second.  Listening as preparation for doing something based upon what one listens to is a new step.  Studies indicate we remember only between 25-50% of what we hear – the rest is abandoned as noise.  After ten minutes of listening, most people begin to drift and can remember less that half of their initial level of remembering.  Unfocused listening results in an awareness of less than 25% of what we hear.

https://www.mindtools.com/az4wxv7/active-listening

Based upon these studies, teachers learn to “chunk” communications they want children to hear, listen to, remember, and be able to respond to or act upon.  To do this, there are several time-tested cues for getting a child to listen and follow directions.  The institutional experiences of Boys Town tell us to do this. 

When communicating with children –

  • Stay calm
  • Be direct
  • State commands positively
  • Give one command at a time 
  • Give age-appropriate instructions
  • Give brief reasons
  • Be physically present
  • Ask the child to repeat the instruction
  • Reward compliance 
  • Make sure you mean it

https://www.boystown.org/parenting/Pages/how-to-get-your-child-to-listen.aspx

Listening to what?

So far, we have addressed the importance of listening, the mandate to teach children to listen, and the general routines and frameworks for listening.  The next level, teaching children to be active listeners, is where the effective communications expectations of the mandates make an educational difference.

Accuracy.  For decades teachers have heard and used the phrase “checking for understanding”.  Ask children to repeat back to you what they listened to you say.  An accurate repeat conveys congruence – the child heard and listened to what you said.  Asking multiple children to repeat what they listened to you say creates an accountability for listening.

Don’t be surprised when a child’s repeating of what they heard you say is nothing like what you said.  They “heard”, they did not “listen”.  Listening is a learned skill.  Patience and persistence are called for.  Simply tell your information a second time and again check for understanding.  And perhaps a third and fourth time.

Because listening is an acquired skill and “acquiring” requires time to learn and time is a valuable instructional commodity, teachers sadly diminish checking for understanding over time.  Teaching accuracy in listening takes time and time wasted due to misunderstanding is far greater that the time to check for initial understanding.

Detail.  Active listening requires an ear for details, and we can teach children to pay attention to details.  The first step is to write down the details as they are verbally given.  Check for understanding on the details.  A second step is to create “responsibility” for details.  One student listens for the “who”, another for the “what”, another for the “how”, another for the “to what degree” and another for the “when”.  Check for understanding.  Rotate responsibilities as some details are given at the end of the directions and everyone must listen to the entire direction.

I observe high quality teachers checking for understanding and for the details of listening in junior and senior high school classrooms.  Not only is what the mandate tells us to do, it is best practice.

Nuance.  Many of the things we listen to are loaded with clues as to the feelings and values and dispositions of the speaker.  Accuracy and details may be further understood by the way they are delivered.  Teachers are not robotics delivering information in monotoned voices.  They imbue what they tell children with the excitement and suspense of new learning.  Children need to understand nuance and identify when it supplies extra meaning to their listening.  Have children listen specifically for descriptor words and phrases; listen to the adjectives and adverbs and prepositions.  Ask listeners to interpret the socio-emotional flavor of what they listened to. 

Clarification and response.  Assign listening students to craft a clarifying question after their listening.  Is there a detail that is not clear enough?  Is there a possible early response a listener wants to try out while still in a checking for understanding phase?  Consider all the time teachers spend answering student questions after the work has begun.  When children ask clarifying questions at the time of the directions they demonstrate and reinforce their skills as active listeners.

Synergy.  Active listening demonstrates a respect and rapport between teacher and students.  When the speaker and listeners are actively engaged, speakers are encouraged to be more descriptive of details and nuance.  Respect for the speaker

In order to propel student learning, communications must become two-way, respectful, challenging, and nuanced.  It may require specific vocabulary and exacting terms.  As communication becomes more focused in specific outcomes, the need for listening and responding skills become even greater. 

How to teach children to be active listeners?

Generalized, active listening is hearing, paying attention, listening, and an ability to respond to what is listened to.  These statements cover the waterfront of how children and teachers engage in school communications, especially as children get older.  It takes loads of concentration, focused attention, and personal commitment to be an active listener.  To be active, a listener has to set aside all of the bad habits of hearing and initial listening and shift into being a committed listener.  Active listening skills come from with in the listener.

  1. Pay attention.  When paying attention, there is about a one second lag between the speaker speaking and the listener’s brain hearing. 
  2. Show that you are listening.  When a speaker perceives you as a listener, the speaker’s brain recognizes and begins to lock into this interpersonal communication.  Take notes.
  3. Provide feedback.  Repeat key points to demonstrate listening. 
  4. Defer judgment. 
  5. Respond appropriately.  Ask valid and respectful questions, summarize key points, suggest what you want to know or do next.

https://www.mindtools.com/az4wxv7/active-listening

Elevating active listening to upper-level listening.

Knowing that active listening is within the listener yet is cued by teacher communication, we can elevate active listening by moving our teaching interactions from the lower three levels – remembering, understanding, and applying – to higher levels of thinking – analyzing, evaluating, and creating.  The sociometrics of a classroom conversation change drastically when we move from asking students for the recall or interpretation of knowledge to the comparing and contrasting ideas, evaluating an ideas significance, or generating new solutions.  Instead of teacher-student interactions, conversations become student-student exchanges.  Teachers use wait time to assure students have time to consider their arguments while using body language to assure a student who is eager to contribute will be able to do so.  Active listening leads to intellectual excitement – the teaching moments teachers cling to in their memories of classroom work. 

Bloom’s Taxonomy

The United States State Department provides these four keys to their personnel regarding listening skills.

1. Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.

2. Be non judgmental

3. Give your undivided attention to the speaker

4. Use silence effectively

They read like sound advice to any teacher who is an ambassador for student learning.

https://2009-2017.state.gov/m/a/os/65759.htm

The Big Duh!

Once again we are called to use what we know to be true of good teaching and learning yet find difficult to do in the fast pacing of school life. 

We know these things.

  • Listening is a core skill essential for students at all levels of their education. 
  • Listening is a learned behavior that we must teach at all grade levels and in all subjects. 
  • Listening is more than hearing if it is to be educational. 
  • Listening takes time and commitment to the behaviors of attention, attitude, and adjustment that allow us to receive, understand, and act upon what we listen to. 
  • Active listening leads to higher levels of intellectual and academic productivity.

And we too often do these things.

  • Pace our teaching based on the first child who appears to have heard us.
  • Do not check for accuracy, detail, or nuance with enough children to assure that good listening occurred.
  • Let the clock determine what comes next in a lesson rather than what we listen to as student readiness for next instruction.

Students are more likely to mirror how we listen and use listening skills than they do our instruction in reading, writing, and speaking.  You know this is true.  Just listen to yourself.