Analysis of Class Stages

TEFL Trainer – Reflective diary

Author: Francesco T.

Bloom’s taxonomy offers a useful way of thinking about the different types of cognitive processes that students can use to engage with knowledge. How can you incorporate them into your lesson planning?

Analysis of Class Stages: between the PPP Model and Bloom’s Taxonomy

A way to incorporate Bloom’s taxonomy into a lesson plan could be done by simply incorporating its stages to each exercise throughout the class so they could match.

The first stage, the remembering is something that can be easily implemented in each lesson plan through the addition of a warm up at the beginning of the lesson that help the students recall what has been learned in a previous lesson that is related to what they will be learning in the rest of the class or maybe this part could be dedicated to a warm-up exercise that is aimed at deducing new concepts from general patterns and structures of the language through a small pair or group activity where everybody can share ideas and find possible answers.

Secondly, the clarification stage of our lesson (the presentation of new elements of the target language) would employ the students skills to interpret and classify the information they have been introduced to be able to utilize it and understand its function.

The natural objective following the understanding on behalf of the students is the need to apply the new information in the target language within set and specific exercises. The second stage, after the presentation of the content then, should be the restricted practice with which help the restricted use of the language aimed at the strengthen and reinforce the newly learned target language. The structures shall be solely structured to help the students think about the application of the content within its own boundaries.

There could be more exercises that could progressively become less restricted, inserting new contexts and new usage of the same target language so it can gradually help the students practice but at the same time slowly analyse the different relation existing between the parts so to differentiate and attribute different functions to the same content that is being learned.

In the practice of the language through specific activities the student start to critique the knowledge, understanding step-by-step the material and the possible usage of the target language following the deconstruction of previous structures in the provided exercises.
The evaluation stage is fundamental to fully retain the knowledge by predicting usages and thinking of other ways to implement the new target language to fulfil specific purposes within their previous contextual knowledge and grammatical knowledge learned up to that point.

The very last stage of a lesson plan is the production of the language, the ‘authentic’ use of the language aimed at communicating rather than using structure merely for the sake of its own practice. This stage allows the students to use all the knowledge they recalled, and they create something new. They get to plan a new text or imagine a new context to communicate within. Their self-knowledge, at this stage, helps them constructing a presentation, a writing or a conversation in appropriate contexts that are complicated according to their level. In the case in which the level is too low, it would be recommendable to provide extra guidance or template to guide them towards the acquisition of the ability of producing new content.

https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/