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BLOOM'S TAXONOMY
Bloom's Taxonomy bases on the form that we learn. Bearing certain low and top levels in mind. It shows a global vision of the educational process, promoting a form of education with a holistic horizon.
Many of the teachers only come up to the second step. The ideal thing to obtain the type of education about that we were speaking before, would be to come up to the last one. It's costlier, but the results are better. Because as say Benjamin Bloom :"the education is action."
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Knowledge: it refers to the aptitude to remeber specific and universal facts, methods and processes, schemes, structures or frames of reference without production of any species.
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Comprehension: it refers to the aptitude to understand; where the student knows what him is communicating and uses the materials or ideas that appear him. The material needs of a process of transfer and generalization, which demands a major capacity of abstract thought. It needs that the pupil explains the relations between the information.
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Application: to take the learned and understood to the practice.
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Analysis: it consists of separating into its elements a problem given in his parts and of discovering the existing relations between them.
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Synthesis: it's the process of working with fragments, parts, elements, to organize them, to arrange them and to combine them to form an everything, a scheme or structure that before wasn't present in a clear way.
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Evaluation: it refers to the aptitude to evaluate; it measures up across the processes of analysis and synthesis. It needs to formulate judgments on the value of materials and methods, in agreement with certain intentions. It includes the quantitative and qualitative judgments of agreement to the criteria that are suggested.
THE C-WHEEL
All children are unique in what they bring to the class and in their ability to process information and learn through different facets of their Multiple Intelligences. They're also unique in their personal preferences and emerging learning styles.
At the moment of working you can consider the ingredients of the "C-WHEEL" as a tool for helping you to create optimal conditions in order to maximize children's learning and enable everyone in your classes to blossom and thrive, both as engaged, responsible learners and as people.
First, the "C-WHEEL" takes as its starting the centrality of the child and the child's learning. Then, there're different segments:
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Context of the learning: be natural, real or understandable. Be relevant and make sense to the child. Allow for the discovery and construction of meaning (learning active and experiential). Use of language as a vehicle to do things which have a real purpose. And support children's understanding with visual things.
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Connections: to connect with the child, build a real content. Child's real life experience at home and at school. Compare and relate to English-speaking people and cultures. To what has gone before and what will follow in the teaching-learning sequence. Between what is learnt and how it's learn.
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Coherence: the use of correct english. In terms of the internal coherence of what is being learnt, it's important that learning should never seem bitty or fragmented to children. At the same time, it needs to be broken down into appropriately sequenced steps, so that children don't feel overwhelmed. Over the course of the primary years it's important to ensure that there're plenty of opportunities for children to acquire and learn language in meaningful, comprehensible and supported ways.
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Challenge: it's important to get the level and balance of linguistic and cognitive challenge right for children. If activities are too easy, children will symple become bored, de-motivated and possibly discruptive. If the activities are too difficult, children are likely to become anxious, and also de-motivated and possibly discruptive too.
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Curiosity: this way it's as indeed we learn. Generate a desire to learn and find out about things, make the act of learning interesting, relevant and enjoyable in its own right.
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Care: affective climate created in children's learning environment. All children need to feel trated and cared about as individual rather than as a group to be controlled. In large classes this may sometimes be difficult, but can be got round by developing strategies for finding time for personalized moments in which you can convery that you know and care about each child. Use a positive language. In the findings of a small-scale study, it was found that on average children receive 460 negative or critical comments and 75 positive or supportive comments every day.
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Community: Communication, collaboration and cooperation. Create a sense of community: adults,children, teachers...
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Creativity: All children come to class with creative potential, and developing creative thinking skills as an integral part of language lessons. In order to create optimal conditions for learning, we need to include activities which develop creativity, fantasy and imagination that are so much part of the world of primary-aged children and which can lead to positive new learning.
Around the edge of the "C-WHEEL" are factors which provide the parameters and filters for determining ways in which optimal conditions for learning may be realized in different teaching situations:
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Educational and cultural context: your country, or region in your country, and whether you're working , a mainstream school, a bi-lingual school or a private language school.
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Methodology:Your approach to teaching and learning whether whole class teaching or a more individualised approach.
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Materials: whether you're using, a language course book or subject-based materials.
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Curriculum: how this is organised and the way objectives and learning outcomes are specified.
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Evaluation: how this is carried out, including the assessment of children's learning.
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Teacher: every teacher, every class and every child is different. The teacher is the "second" important thing after child. All depends of you.
Zone of proximal development (ZDP)
According to Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development consist in the distance that exists from the level of development determined by the aptitude to solve independently the problem and the level of potential development determined by the resolution of a problem under the guide of an adult or in collaboration with another specialized person.
This procedure can be generalized to all the contents of learning, but these suppositions which the author names " of generality ", " of assistance " and " of potential " are questionable. Inside the theory of Vygotsky's development, it thinks that for every age there's a set of psychological functions that mature in relation with the new basic learnings and that lead to the restructuring of the existing functions, new structures being formed. This way the transition takes place to the following age. This takes place inside a social and historical certain situation, which defines the contents and the structure of the learnings for every period of age.
The development implies a qualitative change that depends on the actions of the child in the social situation in the one that develops, emphasizing what the child perceives and that one for what is interested. Every age has an out-standing activity on which the activities of the child are organized and this one faces in every age contradictions in the structures of knowledge that it needs to solve to continue advancing. In conclusion, The ZDP is formed by the processes in which the child proves to be immature but in which it's maturing, so that still it isn't capable of realizing of independent form the activities that need these processes. The imitation is important because it allows to the child to mature in all the processes.
Multiple Intelligences
The Theory of the Multiple Intelligences was designed by the American psychologist Howard Gardner as counterweight to the paradigm of the "only intelligence".
Gardner proposed that the human life needs of the development of several types of intelligence. This way so, Gardner doesn't enter in contradiction with the scientific definition of the intelligence: " aptitude to solve problems or to elaborate valuable goods ".
A good example of this idea is observed in persons who, in spite of obtaining excellent academic qualifications, present important problems to relate to other persons or to handle other facets of their life. Gardner and his collaborators might affirm that, for example, Stephen Hawking doesn't possess a major intelligence that Leo Messi, but each of them has developed a type of different intelligence.
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LINGUISTIC: The aptitude to dominate the language and to be able to communicate with others is transverse to all the cultures. From kids we learn to use the mother language to be able to communicate in an effective way. The linguistic intelligence not only refers to the skill for the oral communication, but to other ways of communicating as the writing, the gestures, etc.
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LOGICAL-MATHEMATIC: As its own name indicates, this type of intelligence links itself to the capacity for the logical reasoning and the resolution of mathematical problems. The rapidity to solve this type of problems is the indicator that determines how many intelligence logician - mathematics is had.
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VISUAL-SPACIAL: The skill to be able to observe the world and the objects from different perspectives. The persons who stand out in this type of intelligence are in the habit of having capacities that allow them to design mental images, to draw and to detect details, besides a personal sense for the aesthetics.
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MUSICAL: The music is a universal art. This intelligence is based that some zones of the brain execute functions linked with the interpretation and composition of music.
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KINESTHETIC:The corporal and motive skills that are needed to handle tools or to express certain emotions.
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INTRAPERSONAL:The intelligence intrapersonal says to that intelligence that authorizes us to understand and to control the internal area of one itself. Persons who stand out in the intelligence intrapersonal are capable of acceding to his feelings and emotions and thinking about these.
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INTERPERSONAL:The interpersonal intelligence authorizes us to be able to warn things of other persons beyond what our senses manage to catch. It's a question of an intelligence that it allows to interpret the words or gestures, or the aims and goals of every speech. Evaluates the capacity for empathize with other persons.
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NATURALISTIC: The naturalistic intelligence allows to detect, to differ and to categorize the aspects linked to the nature, as for example the animal and vegetable species or phenomenon related to the climate, the geography or present objects in the nature.It's one of the essential intelligences for the survival of the human being.
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The seven "R"
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MANAGING CHILDREN POSITIVELY: create and maintain a happy working enviroment in which children feel secure and motivated to learn. With any age group it's important to take initiatives to establish clear working parametres.
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RELATIONSHIPS: the relatioships that you establish with the class as a whole. This influences in the way that the pupils acquiring their knowledge. The teacher is a source of motivation. If a good environment isn't obtained in class, it will not be obtained in the subject either.
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RULES: it's usually best to have as few rules as possible and to make sure that the rules themselves. It's important that any rules you establish are perceived as fair by the children and that you can actually enforce them. The most effective rules are ones which are expressed using inclusive language and for which the children feel ownership. It also helps when rules can be expressed positively rather than negatively in order to highlight desired behaviour. The best way to establish rules as part of your working parameters is to involve the children in decisions about which ones will apply.
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ROUTINES: routines are established patterns of behaviour in which everyone knows what is expected of them and what they should do. The introduction of classroom routines is instrumental in setting up working parameters which function effectively with all ages. With very young children they play a particular important role. In order to introduce and establish routines successfully, you need to have a clear plan of the areas these will cover and the form the will take. It's a way of knowing for the pupils of everything what is going to carried out throughout the day. Familiar routines help to make children feel secure and confident in the classroom.
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RIGHTS AND RESPONSABILITIES: are often two sides of the same coin. It teaches to behave the pupils respecting some others in every sense.
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RESPECT: is the glue which holds together all the other "R"s. If the children feel that you respect and treat them like individuals rather than a class to control, they will also respect and respond to you as individuals, rather than with a collective group mentality which is always much harder to manage positively.
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REWARDS: we teach to do the things for something. There may be times with some classes when introducing a reward system can be an effective way to reinfore appropiate behaviour, and/or to add an aditional, motivational, feel-good factor to things that are already going well.