Climbing Bloom's ladder....

Our class has completed the first two rungs of the Bloom's Taxonomy ladder, we completed the knowledge and comprehension areas as mentioned in a earlier post. To continue our climb to higher level thinking we now need to explore application, anaylsis and synthesis. Below are examples of how we have taken simple letter learning to a level that requires much more "thinking" on the part of my students.

Application
We used our nifty wipe-off boards and the students would print a letter from our sound farm and say aloud what sound it makes. They had to "use" their knowledge of the the letter to tell the group the letter's sound.

Anaylsis
Next, my students needed to do some "comparing". They needed to choose two letters to write on their wipe-off boards and tell the small group how their sounds were different. We had many responses like, "One sound is longer than the other" and "Your teeth show when you make this sound and your lips are together when you make that sound."
Synthesis
As a whole class we now needed to do some "hypothesising", they needed to give me some educated quesses. I held up a letter card with a "M" while making the /E/ sound. I then asked them if that was the correct sound and if not could they explain why is was wrong. This was hard for a large portion of my class, they were not able to articulate why it was wrong. Many simply said, "because it is not the right sound." A few students were able to say articulate that mouth shape and air movement was different for the various sounds.
The final rung of the ladder is "create", we will need to "construct" a project that shows our letter learning.