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We all want to find different ways to get our students to reflect on their learning. One way to do this is to have students do a quickwrite. You can use this type of assignment as a weekly, in-class exercise, or you can ask students to do this in preparation for class. The quickwrite is designed to encourage students to reflect on the week's content and revisit their notes to review what they learned. It is a way to ask questions about course concepts without having to do a review in class. Quickwrite also helps the instructor to identify areas of review; for instance, if many students mention they are still confused about a concept, the instructor can follow up with review immediately instead of waiting to see students miss certain content questions on the exam.
Here are five questions you can use in a quickwrite assignment, though feel free to create your own as well:
When giving instructions about the quickwrite, be sure to point out that students should focus on the content information and not the operation of the course (i.e., grading). Also point out students should write in complete sentences and answer each question thoroughly. While they may not have an answer for question #2 (great!), they should definitely have answers for the other questions. You can assign points to each question as a graded assignment, or you could leave it open as a participation and process grade. Choose whatever method makes the most sense for your course and your students. The quickwrite never needs to be a high stakes exercise; instead, it should be a way to ask students to reflect on their learning and give you information on what content needs to be reviewed. The quickwrite can be done on paper, or you can ask your students to do the quickwrite digitally (it all depends on your objectives, but be sure to consider TPACK!). If you choose to go the digital route, you can give students options to complete the assignment. Below are some great tools that your students can use to complete the quickwrite and easily share with you in a digital format:
For more writing ideas, check out this list of writing tools! Want to share how you use quickwrites with your students, please leave a comment below! Happy writing! Most educators are familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy. Proposed and created in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom and a committee of educators, it is a classification of the different objectives and skills students should learn from specific course content. The taxonomy was updated in 2001 by Anderson and Krathwohl to focus on six levels of learning: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. As you can see below in the first image, Anderson and Krathwohl shifted the taxonomy from nouns to active verbs.  You will often see Bloom's presented as a hierarchical, step approach (either as a pyramid or steps). It is important to note that the learning at the higher levels is dependent on the student having the prerequisite knowledge and skills at the lower levels. So each level can be built on the foundation of the previous levels. However, you can also think of Bloom's functioning at the same time, depending on your learner, your learning context, and your course content. The second image seen below helps educators think of these levels and how they branch out to emphasize and support our different types of learners. Note how each outer circle presents a different way of using the taxonomy levels. You have words that will help you as your write your learning objectives followed by examples of activities you can use as assessments to align to each of your learning objectives. Finally, you have different learning styles connected to all that come in the earlier circles.  As we extend our knowledge of Bloom's Taxonomy, we should start to think how we can extend our students' understanding and practice. We should emphasize and support 21st century learning in our classrooms. The image seen below helps educators think through digital activities aligned with each level of Bloom's. Note that the activities are simply categories and not specific tools. You have the freedom to choose tools that will support these activities. In fact, ask your students to identify digital tools that would be useful for the activities to increase their buy-in to the learning process. For instance, you (or your students) might choose to use Voicethread as your tool. Voicethread can be used on multiple levels, such as for Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, and Evaluating. It all comes down to what your objective is and what information and/or skill you want your students to learn.  Remember, your course objectives should align with your lesson objectives which, in turn, align with your assessments which then align with your evaluation processes. Each lesson objective should focus on helping your students demonstrate the mastery of your course objectives. The lesson objectives directly support the course objectives, and they all should build up the Bloom's taxonomy to help your students show learning mastery over time. For more resources, check out what the University of Arkansas is doing: Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Effective Learning Objectives Learning Objectives – Examples and Before/After Bloom’s Taxonomy Verb Chart Digital Approaches to Bloom’s Taxonomy Finally, just for fun: Bloom’s Taxonomy According to Seinfeld  Why start a blog, especially one about education? For centuries, writers have investigated various forms of writing that result in new thought. Blogging enables writers to express themselves in ways never experienced before, especially as blogging evolves as a literary form. The interaction blogging enables between writer and reader is visceral.
Blogging is more than an individual enterprise, but a collective one. The connection between content and reader is as important as between writer and reader. Central to the conversation are the links provided by the blog. It drives the reader and the conversation at hand. This open-source market place of thought and writing is ever evolving. The hope is that Eduhuh?! will provide a space driven by reason, will allow those a place where they may raise their voice, and will highlight those who have thus far been forced to disappear into the background of the changes within education. You may agree or you may disagree with what is discussed here. No matter what, I hope you speak up and get involved. Welcome to Eduhuh?! |
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Julie K. Marsh is a long-time educator, an EdD student at Virginia Commonwealth University focusing on educational leadership, and an instructional designer. Her current research interests include Design Thinking, Community of Inquiry, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), creativity in the classroom, open sourced educational resources, and participatory culture.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.