I was greatly encouraged to finally meet Bloom in the digital age. As I read Andrew Churches’ article “Bloom’s Taxonomy Blooms Digitally” http://www.techlearning.com/article/44988, my mind raced back and forth between what we were doing in our lessons and what could be done.

It felt like Spring. The seeds that lay dormant during the long cold winter of the status quo of teaching, suddenly began sprouting under the flickering light of the computer screen. I searched, searched some more, downloaded, saved to Favorites and then I realized with horror that so much of our teaching falls in the LOTS zone. Lots of reading and writing, lots of calculations, lots of trying to keep up with the standards and benchmarks, lots and lots of lower order thinking skills. Not always, but  ”lots”.

I immediately changed things. Not radically, the baby is still in the bathwater. Yet, I am now trying to think about “thinking” in my plans. I am trying to challenge students to evaluate and analyze. I have started talking about my ideas, “gleaned from fellow COETAILERS”, with my teaching team and we are hoping to re-design our units. Bloom has started blooming all over my classroom, and hopefully all over our school in a more explicit way in future.

We may need more COETAIL trained gardeners though!