Learning Objectives

• Students will research Bloom's Taxonomy on the internet by completing the Thinking and Questioning WebQuest.
• Students will produce a reference manual for use in future lessons.
• By completing the WebQuest, student will be introduced to the idea that questions can be classified
• Students will demonstrate an awareness that there are different performance expectations for each category of questions.

Instructional Strategies

Lesson Introduction: (2 days)

• Select a reading from a text which is associated with a variety of questions.
• Have students read the assignment, answer the questions, discuss the answers, and correct the questions.
• Ask the students, "What kind of thinking did you have to do to answer this question?" Repeat as needed. Put the answers on newsprint so that you can look at the list again later.
• Once the list is adequately developed, on another piece of newsprint, draw a scale from easy to difficult. Have students order the items on the scale. You should have a scale that will fall into line with Bloom's Taxonomy. Regardless, students should have the idea that there are different questioning and answering strategies, and some are harder than others.
• Introduce the idea that a man named Benjamin Bloom and some of his coworkers in the early 1950's but together a similar scale. This scale is used by teachers and students today to "measure" the difficulty of thinking and questioning.
  

Thinking and Questioning WebQuest (3 days)

• By completing the Thinking and Questioning WebQuest students will:
  Investigate Bloom's Taxonomy of thinking levels.
• List and illustrate the six levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.
• List two definitions for each taxonomy level from the internet making reference to the URL.
• Write a definition in their own words for each taxonomy level.
• List key word for each taxonomy level.
• Write examples of two questions for each taxonomy level.

Materials

Materials Needed:

• Some kind of binder for students' manuals.
• WORD or a similar word processing program
• Computer with access to the internet and a printer
• Note: Students generate the work sheets directly from the WebQuest.
• Evaluation Rubric which can be printed from http://www.mcps.org/iss/portfolio/Think/evalform.htm

It may be helpful to have on hand:

• Hard copies of the web sites students are required to use to complete their manual (All web sites are listed as links in the WebQuest)
• A teacher made manual as a model.

Evaluation

The lesson will be evaluated in three ways:

• Student performance on the Thinking-Questioning WebQuest will be evaluate by the rubric which is available at the link above or within the WebQuest itself.
• Student engagement as evidenced by on-task behavior and other factors recorded anecdotally.
• The lesson's effectiveness will be evaluated by assessing each student's ability to use and integrate the information gathered and organized in the manual produced in the Goldilocks lesson described in the Overview.