Christina Cavage is professor of ESL at Savannah College of Art and Design. Following on from her last article, which focused on two strategies she learned when researching blended learning, Christina now looks at the third and fourth strategies.
Blended Learning, the merging of the physical classroom and the ‘digital world’ has real value in the ESL classroom. In Part One, I shared with you how I fell in love with the concept of blended learning, and what I have learned by implementing blended learning in my own classes.
- First, Bloom’s taxonomy is for real.
- Second, using class time to build those low level cognitive skills is not the best use of that precious time.
- Third, students need in-class support when working on those higher level cognitive skills.
- Fourth, commercial materials don’t always align with Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy, so we need to create or seek out meaningful materials to extend learning.
So, let’s dive into the last two lessons. Students need in-class support when working on those higher level cognitive skills. Analyzing, evaluating and creating are high on Bloom’s taxonomy, and in addition to requiring a great deal of scaffolding, students need classroom support when working on those skills.
Strategy #3: Use class time to give students the opportunity to ‘experiment’ with tasks that require them to analyze, evaluate and create.
We so often move the creating outside of the classroom, and wonder why students may not always be successful. How many times have you asked yourself, “Why aren’t they getting it?”. “Getting it” and creating with it are two very different things, not to mention far apart on Bloom’s cognitive triangle. In a recent lesson, after students learned the basics of a thesis statement outside of class, they came to class and evaluated thesis statements in groups. On large newsprint, I hung thesis statements around the classroom. Each group was assigned a thesis statement to evaluate. In addition to identifying the key elements of the thesis statement, they had to decide if it was effective. Then, we synthesize the ‘common’ issues as a class. Students went back and created new statements based on what they had learned. This was an advanced class, one that has had a lot of experience with thesis statements. However, I still spent nearly an hour working on this task. What was the result? Outstanding thesis statements.
Using precious class time to move students up those higher-level domains, is an effective use of class time. However, we are not generally ‘guided’ in that direction. If you use a commercial text, you may get one or two instruction lines on thesis statements. These exercises generally focus on those low-level domains. There is good news, though. The good news is that I have seen a shift in this approach in recent months. Project-based learning, and collaborative learning tasks are making their way into ESL materials. And these approaches, when implemented thoughtfully, help scaffold learning up Bloom’s cognitive domains.
Strategy #4: Utilize projects and collaborative tasks to extend the content, and move up the cognitive ladder.
Consider a culminating task for each course outcome. Culminating tasks can help learners bring it all together while moving up the taxonomy. They also help build those academic skills they will need in their content courses, and are representative of what students will be asked to do in those courses. These tasks can spread over a few days, or a few hours. Students can work together in both the digital world, and the physical classroom.
Making the most out of class time is critical. Ensuring our students are ready to move into their academic programs is also critical. Students won’t have to take a traditional grammar test in their academic programs, but they will be required to use that grammar to evaluate, synthesize and create.
Read Christina’s last article, which looks at her first two strategies on blended learning.