After 18 years of teaching, I am very familiar with Bloom's taxonomy and higher level thinking skills. I have the list of Bloom's verb headings burned into my head and work to hit the more sophisticated levels of thinking beyond basic recall. I am of course a fan of using questioning skills to further student cognitive growth and reading comprehension. The levels of questioning are how we teach skills like critical thinking that will serve students in their real lives. What I was not so familiar with was the information regarding Webb's DOK. I can see now how Bloom's different levels of thinking can be enhanced when connected to Webb's DOK information. I thought the Cognitive Rigor Matrix was very helpful in showing how teachers can take a more simple task of "understanding" and move it to level three or four on Webb's DOK by asking the students to do more sophisticated tasks to prove they understand what they are reading. I appreciate how each of Bloom's levels of thinking were enhanced by considering the skills required to hit that specific thinking level. Karin Hess said that "Webb's Depth of Knowledge is about complexity not difficulty" which made an impact on how I was thinking about these two ways to increase reading comprehension skills through questioning. It was helpful to consider that you can make something that is not necessarily difficult, complex.
In summary, the Cognitive Rigor Matrix can be useful to any teacher who is trying to break down the steps of getting students to master the higher order thinking skills. Blooms Taxonomy clearly identifies the different thinking levels but when you combine that with Webb's DOK now a teacher has a path to move a student into deeper thinking and more challenging ways to show their thinking. For example, the most difficult level of thinking on Blooms hierarchy is "Create". I did not regularly consider how to break down the different depths of this one particular level of thinking. I think that is why so many students struggle when they are confronted with a task that requires this type of thinking. For example, in my English I class, I asked my students to draw the name of a Greek god/goddess out of a hat and answer questions about them as if they lived in the modern world. I review a few known facts about the different choices and then expect the students to create conjectures based on what they know. This has traditionally been a fun, creative project that allows students to create at a level two DOK. In my comprehensive high school classes, students had no trouble, but when I moved to a continuation high school and tried the same assignment, some of my students were confused. They wanted to know why they couldn't find an answer for a good modern day job for Zeus anywhere on the internet. Using conjecture based on information was a very challenging task. I had to scaffold that assignment more and get them comfortable with the idea that they would be making up the answers based on information they already knew. Once the students can do this, we can then add layers to this assignment and move to level 3 by asking them to research more information about their god/goddess. I can then move them into level four by introducing multiple sources of information, like a statue or a myth that highlights information about their god/goddess. The rigor matrix helps teachers expand the thinking level they are working on by breaking down the different depths of that thinking into levels. The progression provided by the matrix helps teachers create the necessary supports to guide students when they are pushing their own thinking abilities. Individually, both Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Depth of Knowledge are important concepts to think about when teachers are creating assignments; combined, they are an even more powerful teaching tool.
It seems that my students are very accomplished in answering questions in level 1 and 2 of Webb's Depth of Knowledge, but getting them to stretch their cognitive skills to move into levels three and four is a continued focus of mine. I am planning on trying to incorporate more complex tasks with the easier skills like "understanding." I also think that I will be able to get more out of my students if I am more clear on the different degrees of complexity in what I am asking the students to do. I have to do a lot of scaffolding for some of my students in order to lead them to making deeper connections with the text we are studying. Sometimes I feel like I should be teaching math, or a subject I struggle with instead of one that came so easy for me because it can be a challenge to try to break down the thinking process when my own process is sort of automatic. I don't remember when I became a critical reader; one who questions the writer and is aware of how the write is attempting to manipulate me. However, these are the skills I am trying to teach and thinking about the complexity of a task, as opposed to the difficulty, I believe will better help me break down the steps needed in order to get to the higher order thinking skills.
I will need to work with my team to create levels of questioning that build to the more complex AND challenging. Time is the most needed thing needed in order to modify existing lessons to reflect more in depth questioning. I believe it would benefit my team if we spent some time researching different examples of level four type performance tasks for our students. One challenge we face at continuation high school is that we get a new group of students every 45 days. There is no way to predict who will be in my class again for a second, continuous quarter and how many students will be in my class who are brand new to our school. So whatever we are studying, we have 45 days to teach the material and get the students to a culminating project that will allow them to synthesize what they have learned and present it in a different and unique way. One solution to this problem, and something we have been talking about, is to collaborate with another department on a PBL to cut the time it takes to research and get through the material more quickly. This hasn't happened yet, but I am hopeful that the English department can get something collaborative in action at some point this year.
There are a number of benefits to teaching to Webb's Depth of Knowledge in regards to increase student learning. For one thing, more challenging questioning is how we teach students to independently think critically over time. I want to be sure we are graduating citizens who challenge established lines of thought; citizens who process independently and formulate their own opinions after gathering data from relevant sources. There is so much at stake politically and in many other arenas in today's world where the ability to sift through what is real and what isn't is so challenging, I hope students leave my high school with the ability to own those skills. Additionally, if the students are comprehending what they are reading more fully, and able to analyze and think about the information in their own unique way, they will do better on state tests, do better in college, and be more successful in their work place.
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