Creating Creatives part 2--Blooms Taxonomy

The second post in a series for Jen Funk Weber's Stitching for Literacy program.

In the 1950s, educator and psychologist, Benjamin Bloom, created a triangular chart of cognitive thinking/learning behaviors, moving from the most common and basic, at the bottom of the triangle, to the highest, most complex, at the tip of the triangle. This was dubbed “Blooms Taxonomy”. At the time, Bloom determined that 95% of what children were asked to do on tests required them to work at the most basic level—recalling information.

While this series is meant to focus primarily on the upper levels of Bloom’s model, I’ll briefly cover how stitching falls into all levels of Blooms Taxonomy. At the lowest level of thinking/learning, we have the category of knowledge. Teaching stitching certainly offers knowledge—how different stitches are made, where to place them, even simple things like how to thread a needle and make a knot.

Setting Bloom aside for a moment, let’s look at another basic skill that is supported by stitching. Think back to when you were young. Did you ever play with lacing toys—those cardboard shapes with holes punched in them with laces to “stitch” through the holes? For me, those were favorites. They were designed to teach small motor skills (as opposed to gross motor skills, such as running)—how to thread the lace through consecutive holes. Real stitching teaches those same skills, though on a finer, more skilled basis.

What about you? Did you play with lacing toys as a child? Can you remember any of your first sewing or stitching lessons? What were some of the first things you ever stitched, and who taught you?

The Importance of Creating Creatives--Part 1

“She’s a Creative,” someone said with a shrug. That explained it all--her hair, her makeup, even the odd little boots she wore. Why does our society want to separate those who are creative from those who are not? It’s as if we believe that the gift of creativity is something only some of us have. (I beg to differ.) And while creativity may be esteemed in highly successful artists in society, it is often dismissed in those who are not.

In schools, we push out children toward the academic. We are prepared to cut the arts if budgets get too tight. College professors complain about students who had four-point-plus high school GPAs, stellar ACT scores, but have limited higher-level thinking skills—the very skills they will need to be productive in college and this rapidly changing world. Many of these students were “taught to the test,” a necessity brought on by pressures on school systems to “prove” their competence in teaching. And these students worked hard, learning those quantifiable things that would be on their tests. Their parents, their school systems and they themselves were proud—as they should be. It was a job well done. But are they adequately prepared for the future? Think about this: the children who enter kindergarten today will be a part of the work force in 2070. Who knows what the world will look like then? How do we prepare them? One thing we must do, I believe, is to help them be thinkers, experimenters, questioners who are willing to try something different. To adjust to all the changes that will invariably shape the coming decades, they will need to be Creatives.

Creativity is much less quantifiable than math, science or language skills. But in the coming days, we will examine what creativity is (hint: it’s more than being artistic), how it is tightly linked to higher-order thinking skills, and how it positively impacts all aspects of learning. And, we’ll take a look at how stitching can be a part of creating Creatives.

Reflect on your own experiences. How do you define creativity? Where do you encounter it in your life?

Reading and Brain Activity

A fascinating study was done using MRI imaging to determine what happens in our brains when we read.

there are several different neuron clusters involved in story comprehension. For example, a particular area of the brain ramped up when readers were thinking about intent and goal-directed action, but not meaningless motion. Motor neurons flashed when characters were grasping objects, and neurons involved in eye movement activated when characters were navigating their world.

In other words,our brains fire, during reading, as if we are doing what is read about.

These findings, reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, strongly suggest that readers are far from passive consumers of words and stories. Indeed, it appears that we dynamically activate real-world scripts that help us to comprehend a narrative—and those active scripts in turn enrich the story beyond its mere words and sentences. In this way, reading is much like remembering or imagining a vivid event.

83% of students get books for their independent reading from the school library

I'll say again what I've been saying for years: librarians are the unsung heros of our schools. They fly under the radar as support staff, but their impact on learning can be huge. In response to a recent decision in Los Angeles to eliminate all the certified school librarians from the district, Dr. Camia Alire, President of the Library Asscociation has issued a powerful open letter to the superintendent of the schools, highlighting just how important libraries and librarians are to students.

School libraries play a significant role in the lives of our children,
but this move will have an even greater negative impact on students who live in poverty. According to a recent survey for the Scholastic Corporation, 83% of students get books for their independent reading through the school library. For many students, school libraries are the only source of free access to computers and the Internet, but without the expertise and guidance of a certified school librarian, students will be left to fend for themselves and struggle to avoid the misinformation pitfalls of the Internet.

Saving teens from sudden cardiac arrest

I am inspired by, and honored to call Mary Beth Schewitz my friend and writing partner of more than 6 years. After losing her 20-year old son, Max, to sudden cardiac arrest (caused by an undiagnosed heart problem) she set out to help other families who might have at risk teens and not know it. Here's her story:

Incredible shrinking manuscript revision technique

A different way to get an overview of your novel and find ways to make it stronger. Good stuff!

The Future of Museums and Libraries

There’s an interesting discussion going on regarding the future of museums and libraries. Referred by some as “memory institutions”, these “LAMs” (Libraries, Archives, and Museums) are looking at ways to collaborate to better provide quality resources for people in the digital age. OCLC produced a report in 2008 that explores how memory institutions can collaborate best. In addition to the institutions collaborating, they envision a world where

“users add their knowledge to information resources through mechanisms such as social tagging or community annotation. These social systems enhance the utility of the materials presented while enriching and supporting the institutional descriptive effort by ‘absorbing community knowledge.’ Innovative and evocative means of user engagement enables the capture of the associative response to collections, not just the facts about them.”

Like publishers, these institutions are scrambling to figure out how to best serve the community/consumer in this time of rapid change.

Transliteracy--an author's view

Transliteracy, the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media… is a hot topic among educators and and librarians alike. Already librarians are charging themselves with the responsibility to close the gap in the digital divide that exists between the haves and the have nots.

Schools have computers, but with the continuing pressures placed on them by high stakes tests, how can they incorporate more time toward making their students more transliterate? Yet everyone seems to agree that this needs to be done.

The question I ask myself is, how do authors and children’s publishers (who have had a long and enduring love affair with the printed word) work toward the transliteracy of children? For authors, websites, blogs and vlogs, social networking sites such as Facebook and even Twitter can help with this, if we aim them at our younger readers. This media may be utilized by children in schools as they do author studies, book reports and more. Publishers can provide book trailers, online reading clubs, and other interactive activities. As much as I love the printed page—and I do!—the digital age is upon us, and we must now do more than provide ways to contribute to children becoming literate. We need to provide them with quality transliteracy experiences, as well.