Well, for at least the next 2 weeks, I’m forced to teach my class in a virtual fashion. All teachers in the great state of Ohio are in the same boat. 

A few years back, Columbus State Community College commissioned me to create an online version of one of their history classes. It was a tremendous learning experience. When I embarked on that journey, I kept reciting a mantra, Make lessons impactful and engaging. I was able to achieve this throughout the creation process and it’s guiding my efforts over the next few weeks. 

I learned last week that Muskingum, like all higher ed institutions in Ohio, would be closed until the end of March. My experience creating online content gave me a dose of confidence that I could weather this storm. In this episode, I’ll share my template. This template is grounded in Bloom’s Taxonomy and you can use it every week until the crisis eases and we get back to normal. 

The final caveat is that my students have internet access. If your students are really young, or don’t have access, this template would have to be adapted. 

Before we get into the template, I’d like you to take a moment and just breathe. Things like this happen. I’ve learned that flexibility is not just a physical thing. You also must be flexible emotionally and dispositionally. 

Taoism is attributed to the perhaps legendary Lao Tzu. One illustration attributed to this perhaps fictional man is a comparison between a large stately mature tree and small supple sapling. During a powerful storm, the sapling swayed and arched effortlessly in the strong winds, while the massive stiff tree snapped in half under the strain. I’m going to challenge you to be more like the sapling, not just during the next few weeks, but in general. We’ll survive. Your students will learn and be fine. Take a deep breath and understand that this is not business as usual. In fact, take some time over the next few weeks to do some things around the house you’ve been putting off, or do something fun with your family. Revel in the fact that for the next few weeks you don’t have to set your alarm!

Okay, enough with the pep talk. Let’s dive into this template. Do you remember learning about Bloom’s Taxonomy in Intro to Education? I hope so. It’s a wonderful, simple, and applicable model to apply to instruction. Here’s a refresher course:

• The base levels focus on understanding
• The middle levels involved evaluation and application
• The apex challenges students to create something

This template is going to prompt students to master all 3 levels. 

I encourage you to utilize a central Google Doc which will act as a GPS for the lesson. I prefer using a HyperDoc, because they look cool. Here’s a link to the episode where I interviewed the HyperDocs Girls if you’re unfamiliar. Here’s a link to the HyperDoc I sent my students yesterday. 

Once you have your lesson idea, please also consider recording a brief YouTube which will give students some guidance and a bit of encouragement. If you have a Gmail account, you have a YouTube account. Set up your phone to record a video and then once recorded, upload it to YouTube, make certain it’s public, and then put a link at the top of your Google Doc. You’ll see this at the top of my HyperDoc. Here’s a direct link to my weekly pep talk. 

In my Intro to Education class this week, we were going to focus on Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Growth Mindset. This alteration of the typical school calendar represents a truly teachable moment. In using Bloom’s as a guide, it’s initially essential that students have foundational understanding. This understanding will form the base of Blooms. My students are going to master 3 things:

1. Chapter 4 from our text (which elaborates on Bloom’s Taxonomy)
2. Carol Dweck’s TedTalk
3. An online resource created by Alyson Hobrecht entitled “Inspire a Positive Growth Mindset in Yourself and Students” 

I added a level of accountability and prompted students to build something that will benefit them once finals roll around and they’re forced to review this material. Each student must create a 12-term Quizlet set on these resources, obtain a sharable link, highlight their name on the landing pad (which I’ll describe later), and then insert the link to their Quizlet sets. 

After students have obtained an understanding of the growth mindset, I challenge them to apply it to a real-life scenario. In this case where I’m teaching college education majors about Bloom’s Taxonomy and the growth mindset, the application process was simple. Students were to speculate how they’ll cope with an anticipated challenge during that trying rookie year as a teacher. If one can predict an obstacle, one has a better chance of mitigating that obstacle. This is a powerful real-life application. Your challenge is to dream up such an application for your lesson. If not a real-life application, dream up an engaging challenge where students are forced to evaluate the concept you’re teaching. Make certain to use the middle sector of Bloom’s as your guide. Once students have obtained an understanding of your lesson, push them to evaluate, or apply it. This represents higher levels of thinking as you climb Bloom’s pyramid. 

Which leads us to the creation phase–the apex of Blooms. I love to challenge my students to express themselves in unfamiliar ways. Blooms promotes such creative challenges. This is where the magic happens. In this case, I challenged my future educators to produce a 3-panel comic on StoryBoardThat. Typically, we’d spend a portion of a class period learning how to create via this platform. That is not an option this week. So, I turned to the world’s most prolific educator YouTube for guidance. I found a wonderful and brief tutorial on how to create using this platform. Once students mastered the unfamiliar platform, they were challenged to illustrate and create a brief narrative based on their anticipated rookie teacher growth mindset obstacle. 

The final ingredient in this recipe is the landing pad. There needs to be a place where students can share their efforts. Learning Management Systems make that easy and you can certainly go that route, but if you’d like more student collaboration, another option is to create a landing pad. A landing pad is merely a Google Doc that is the class roster. But with this doc, you alter the share settings so students can edit it. This allows kids to highlight their names and insert links to their own creations. For the StoryBoardThat prompt, I created Google Slide Presentation and put in Can Edit mode. Each student was challenged to generate a screenshot of their comic and insert it on 1 slide and on the next slide compose a narrative describing how they’ll master this growth mindset challenge. Once everyone’s images and narratives are on the slide presentation, students can collaborate and peer evaluate! 

I plan on using this template every week till the crisis eases. Hopefully, I gave you some ideas that you can utilize.

Episode Template

The Problem:

Teachers are at a loss on how to proceed with online instruction.

The Solution:

Apply Bloom’s Taxonomy via a template that can be used each week. 

What you can do Tomorrow: 

• Decide what lesson you need to teach this week
• Create a HyperDoc which acts as the lesson’s GPS
• Create prompts that satisfy all levels of Blooms
• Create a landing pad for students to submit work

When faced with challenges such as this, remember Lao Tzu’s example of the supple sapling. You’ll weather this storm a lot better if you relax and accommodate the powerful winds. 

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