Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

First Step:

Let me preface this Learning Journal entry by saying I used Bloom’s “Revised” Taxonomy. I felt it was explained in greater detail on the webpage.

The student will write a compound sentence using conjunctions.

• Remembering: The student will be able to recognize a compound sentence and list the conjunctions with in the sentence.
• Understanding: The student shall compare multiple sentences presented and decide which ones are compounds and interpret whether conjunctions are present in each sentence.
• Applying: The student shall write a compound sentence using conjunctions.
• Evaluating: The student will structure three compound sentences and integrate more than one conjunction into each sentence.
• Evaluating: The student will read two paragraphs and detect any and all compound sentences and identify the conjunctions within each compound sentence.
• Creating: The student shall plan and construct a coherent paragraph using at least 2 compound sentences with conjunctions on the topic of their choosing.

Second Step:

I do not believe the students were less capable than he assumed. There was obviously a problem with his teaching methods and lessons, if he actually did anything other than lecture. This is based on the fact that the “majority” of his students still didn’t grasp what he wanted them to.

They may not have been paying attention, but if they were he did not teach the students the critical thinking skills

necessary to grasp the circular nature of orbit and the tilting of the earths’ axis because they could not associate those two simple facts with the concept of the changing of the seasons.

They definitely had trouble visualizing, analyzing and interpreting what was taught to them because they could not express it in words. This was a complete failure, unfortunately, on his part to instill the basic knowledge base and plan lessons or activities that stretched the students in any way. If he had moved them passed just basic knowledge and made them create something or use that basic knowledge in a high ordered thinking process the results would have been dramatically different. Sorry, Paul! This sticks out like a soar thumb because the whole class can not be below grade level big guy!

I would suggest laying a foundation of the basic knowledge, as he might have. However, plan activities or lessons that actual make the students apply that knowledge and through assessment or along the way he will see who is not getting it. The students can collaborate or work individually but the plan has to be to ensure that they don’t merely get each fact but they can use their brains and connect the dots between those facts as well as apply them in different situations or settings. Such as making or drawing models, or to a TEST!