Written by Struggling over which workshop to attend for session two, I begrudgingly landed in “A Death Avenged” by Mark Johnson a Social Studies teacher at Concordia International School. Leading us through a creative lesson beginning with a mysterious tombstone, Johnson modeled the process of investigating resources through primary documents: how to determine validity, questions to ask to further understanding, and integrating necessary course content (particularly in the AP classroom).
However, he hit the nail on the head half-way through the exercise: flipping Blooms taxonomy by referencing an article in “Inverting Blooms Taxonomy” in Education Week. This came up with Jeff and Kim at #ETC11 and it sparked my interest then…
As teachers we teach as we were taught: lecture, discussion, completely instructor driven. However, if we are able to accomplish the same ‘objectives and benchmarks’ required of us, why not let the students reach those themselves? Pushing them to create something that will build the knowledge that society expects them to have. Are we not back at the Socratic method in a modern sense? Ask the question. Push them to create. Require acquisition of knowledge. No matter how it may be gained.
Got me more interested in ‘The flipped classroom’ concept a colleague of mine is doing an incredible job at in his General Chemistry classroom…could it work in social studies? Time may tell….
Picture: “The Death of Socrates” by Jacques-Louis David (1787) http://law2.umkc.edu/
