An Exercise in Metacognition

 

Metacognition = thinking about thinking

 

We have a group of students who come to Jesus People USA every fall to attend our Project 12 discipleship school.  We are experimenting with what is called a flipped classroom. About a year ago we started a class called Everybody’s Study Club. It was to be a test of the flipped classroom paradigm. Let me try to explain. A flipped classroom is doing the opposite of what traditional classrooms do. Normally the class meeting is used for media presentations and lecture, then sometimes tests to see if the students understand. Basically the class time is used to gather facts about the subject and to understand the facts and they to demonstrate mastery in a testing situation. These activities exercise mostly lower order thinking skills (LOTS) and we spend lots (most of our) time in school thinking this way.

A flipped classroom does all of what is done inside the normal classroom, outside of class as homework. There may be a movie to watch. The teacher sends a DVD home with the student. There may be a lecture or a demonstration. Again the teacher records the lecture and demonstration and sends a video home with the student. There may be a reading assignment assigned to gather more facts.

The students then come to the flipped classroom where they come face to face with the HOTS (higher order thinking skills through discussion questions asked by the teacher or through other classroom exercises. The LOTS and HOTS are based on Bloom’s Taxonomy which every teacher trained since the 1950’s probably knows about. The flipped classroom is only one application of the technology out of many. Bloom is all over the internet.

The way we at JPUSA experimented with the flipped classroom is in what we call Everybody”s Study Club. Really it is just a Sunday school class. But with some pretty dedicated adult students. Can you imagine giving homework for Sunday school? I want to give a shout out for our curriculum providers, III Millennium Seminary at http://thirdmill.org/seminary/s . These folks provide seminary classroom videos at no charge. They are produced for missionaries and indigenous peoples in many languages. I hope there is a special place in the New City for these generous folks and the people who support them financially. Of course their presentations offer a theological viewpoint but they obviously try to embrace rather than exclude in the words of Miroslav Volf. Differences make for great discussions.

A little more about Bloom. Below is a triangle of his taxonomy. It is called a taxonomy of the cognitive realm. A taxonomy is an arrangement from lesser to greater of any kind characteristic, in this case of simple thinking skills to complicated thinking skills. Generally the academic community accepted his breakdown with enthusiasm and only later in the last century made two changes, now called Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. They reversed the order of the top two thinking that creativity is more complex than evaluation. I can see the sense of that. And the second change was in the words themselves. Instead of using noun or adjective descriptions, they proposed the more active verbally based words, going from Creation to creating, for instance. I like that too. In case you want to follow this a little more closely let me give you a chart centered on using bloom’s taxonomy to ask questions.

 

Sample Question Stems Based on Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy

 Remembering

 Who?

Where?
Which one?
What?
How?
Why?
How much?
How many?
When?
Can you name all the…?
Who spoke to …?
Which is true or false?
 
Understanding
 
What does this mean?
Which are the facts?
State in your own words.
Is this the same as …?
Give an example.
Select the best definition.
Condense this paragraph.
What would happen if …?
Explain why . . .
What expectations are there?
Read the graph (table).
What are they saying?
This represents . . .
What seems to be …?
Is it valid that …?
What seems likely?
Show in a graph, table.
Which statements support …?
What restrictions would you add?
Outline. . .
What could have happened next?
Can you clarify. . .?
Can you illustrate . . . ?
Does everyone think in the way that … does?
 
Applying
 
Predict what would happen if ...
Choose the best statements that apply.
Judge the effects of …
What would result …?
Tell what would happen if …
Tell how, when, where, why.
Tell how much change there would be if …
Identify the results of …
Write in your own words …
How would you explain …?
Write a brief outline …
What do you think could have happened next?
Who do you think…?
What was the main idea …?
Clarify why …
Illustrate the …
Does everyone act in the way that … does?
Draw a story map.
Explain why a character acted in the way that he did.
Do you know of another instance where …?
Can you group by characteristics such as …?
Which factors would you change if…?
What questions would you ask of…?
From the information given, can you develop a set of instructions about …?
 
Analysing
 
What is the function of …?
What’s fact? Opinion?
What assumptions …?
What statement is relevant?
What motive is there?
What conclusions?
What does the author believe?
What does the author assume?
State the point of view of …
What ideas apply?
What ideas justify the conclusion?
What’s the relationship between?
The least essential statements are …
What’s the main idea? Theme?
What literary form is used?
What persuasive technique is used?
Determine the point of view, bias, values, or intent underlying presented material.
Which events could not have happened?
If … happened, what might the ending have been?
How is … similar to …?
What do you see as other possible outcomes?
Why did … changes occur?
Can you explain what must have happened when …?
What were some of the motives behind …?
What was the turning point?
What are some of the problems of…?
Can you distinguish between …?
 
Evaluating
 
What fallacies, consistencies, inconsistencies appear?
Which is more important, moral, better, logical, valid, appropriate?
Find the errors.
Is there a better solution to…?
Judge the value of …
What do you think about …?
Can you defend your position about …?
Do you think … is a good orbad thing?
How would you have handled…?
What changes to … wouldyou recommend?
Do you believe …?
How would you feel if …?
How effective are …?
What are the consequences of …?
What influence will … have on our lives?
What are the pros and cons of…?
Why is … of value?
What are the alternatives?
Who will gain and who will lose?
 
Creating
 
Can you design a … to…?
Can you see a possible solution to …?
If you had access to all resources, how would you deal with …?
Why don’t you devise your own way to …?
What would happen if?
How many ways can you …?
Can you create new and unusual uses for …?
Can you develop a proposal which would…?
How would you test …?
Propose an alternative.
How else would you …?
State a rule.

Adapted from the following sources: Pohl, Michael. Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn: Models and Strategies to Develop a Classroom Culture of Thinking.
Cheltenham, Vic.: Hawker Brownlow. 2000; Tarlington, Denise. “Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy.” Powerpoint;
www.center.iupui.edu/ctl/idd/docs/Bloom_revised021.doc, February 8, 2006; http://eprentice.sdsu.edu/J03OJ/miles/Bloomtaxonomy(revised)1.htm
WCPSS AG Program 2009 Toolbox for Planning Rigorous Instruction Section 5: Thinking

And here is your assignment: (Teachers can’t help it.)Write one question for each of Bloom’s levels.This assignment centers in on the application level but you will have to rise to the creative level at times. Or you could just evaluate me low on the affective taxonomy (Bloom has one of those also) and forget about it as they say in the gangster movies.

 

 Way back in the mid 1970s I was teaching high school in Menomonie Wisconsin. I loved the job and the students but being a new teacher I was very concerned about classroom discipline. The result is that I was very serious in the many cases of students telling jokes or pulling pranks. Didn't want the classroom to get out of control. Well about half way through the year the students told me that their nick-name for me was "Stoney" because I was so serene and serious all the time. It was true. I had to laugh at myself so I wrote several stories about Stoneyman. Here is the opening:

 

 

ORIGIN OF STONYMAN

As with all legends, the stories about the beginnings of Stonyman are many

and varied. According to one of the myths, the stony hero had his beginnings

in the haze of a hippie haven where the grass was not cut-—it was sucked. This

story pictures the beginning not of Stonyman, but of Stoned-man, one of Stony-
man's arch enemies. Another story, completely fallacious, tells of a vortex
of cosmic forces hovering over a statue of George Washington, thus producing
Stonyman.

You now have in hand the true story of the origin of Stonyman. In real life
he is the mild mannered teacher Lythos Stein, but in his heroic form he is
Stonyman, master of the basic matter of the universe, rocks, and stones,
pebbles, and even the smallest grains of sand.

Faster than a speeding fossil, able to leap tall pebbles in a single bound.
Is it a boulder? Is it a cliff? NO! It's Stonyman.
Lythos Stein was born an ordinary child, like all children slapped into life
upside down. He spent his boyhood days in a small Wisconsin town-—running,
laughing, crying, puppy-dogging like any boy in any town. In those days, there
was nothing heroic in his nature. He was normal in every way, normally good,
normally bad, normally educated in a small Wisconsin high school.
It was during the first year in college that Lythos first began to be interested
in rocks and stones. "Interested" is a mild term——he was preoccupied. His
roommate reported him to the college shrink. Lythos had stones in his closet,
pebbles in his drawers, and (at least his roomate thought) rocks in his head.

Perhaps Lythos was crazy in those days. His roommate was convinced, but
inside Lythos Stein there was order. His consuming interest lay in the stuff with
which the universe was made. His search was deeper than the inanimate rocks
and stones that he handled and observed. He was searching -— looking for that
which would bring unity to the universe. He was Aristotle. He was Plato. He was
Einstein.

In his search for rocks and stones, Lythos came to love digging. Whatever
came into his experience, he dug.  Legend says that when his pet dog died, he got
carried away and buried him twelve feet deep. Figuratively speaking, he dug into
any subject related at all to stones. Literally, he dug as a member of the Yeahoo
Archeological Society.

Lythos was chosen to lead the Third Yeahoo Expedition to an archeological
dig at the ancient biblical city of Jerusalem in Israel. To Lythos, his findings
were fantastic. The museum curators back home however, were not impressed by
the mass of artifacts sent back by Lythos. They were looking for bones, for pots,
for statues, but all they got were stones, rocks and pebbles. Finally Lythos'
funding was revoked. They wouldn't even fund his trip back to the states. Lythos
didn't care—-he was in heaven in his hole beneath the streets of Jerusalem. ;,

We pass quickly over the days of tedious digging——deeper and deeper. Lythos
found city foundation upon city foundation. He dug through a hundred glorious ages
in a hundred thrilling days. The deeper he dug, the simplier and more beautiful
the cities became.

]ust as spring was spreading over the Israeli countryside, Lythos was reaching
the first city. A normal archeologist would have stopped at this point, but Lythos
kept descending for the virgin soil on which the original city had been built. The
Easter pilgrims filled the city above the day that Lythos' spade hit the rock. He
quickly threw aside the last foundation stones and uncovered—-the R0CK——foundation
of a hundred cities. He shoveled away the dirt from side to side, but there was no
end to the Rock. It was as if this rock was the foundation of t  cities
all over the world. Exhausted, Lythos threw his shovel and began to study the
Rock. The Rock was hard but strangely warm to his searching fingers. There
also was a pulse in the rock, much like a heartbeat, barely discernable. Lythos
to this day refers to it as the Rock which Lives.

It is at this point that we must return to the surface for Lythos has never
revealed the details of his communion with the Rock. We see him only as he comes
forth from his digging--changed—-imperceptably but fundamentally different. There
is an understanding in his eyes. He knows why he is in the world and the world
will never be the same.

Stonyman, the rock has sent you.
Stonyman, Stonyman.
Stonyman, the Rock has shared his power with you. Stonyman.
May the Rock be with you forever. Stonyman, Stonyman.
May the Rock in you forever. Stonyman.

Lythos’ secretary Pebblius Granite put the whole history of those days in a poem,

THE DIGGINGS
 

"Behold that young fool

With excavating tool. "
Said the man in black,
As he turned his back.
 And the young man drilled
His shovel filled,
Hard at his work,
To the world, a jerk.
 
"He can not build,
He's too unskilled, "
Said the man in black,
Munching on a snack.
 And the young man drilled
His shovel filled,
Even he didn't know,
What he sought below.
 
"Why does he search,
It's in my church."
Said the fat in black.
Egomaniac.
 And the young man drilled
His shovel filled,
Found an ancient rock,
An old stumbling block.
 
"Wonder where he's gone?‘
Said the automaton,
Handicap in black,
Hypochondriac.
 Up the young man came,
With his heart aflame,
With a renewed mind,
Power to unbind.
 
It was such a shock,
That it stopped the clock,
Of the man in black,
With a cardiac.
 Now he knew how to build
No longer unskilled,
On that deep foundation,
Real edification.
 
But it’s got no pretty glass,
 And those people got no class.
Said a new man in black,
Dipsomaniac.

The Transformation of Justice

I read this story at an open Mike at Jesus People USA on Apr.3 2015.

 

The Transformation of Justice

 

Justice was born in a penthouse high above the gold coast in Chicago. He was beautiful boy who seemed perfect in every way. Everyone in his rich neighborhood loved him. And everyone in the poor neighborhoods wished they could have a boy like that as their son also.

As justice grew things did not stay so ideal. He had a mean side. When he played with the other children stories would come back that he had a Mr Hyde side that showed itself in rudeness and intolerance.

 

About the same time Justice was born, a little girl was born in an alley on the South side of Chicago. She got her name when her mother brought her to a shelter saying, "Mercy, please have mercy." She was known as Mercy from that moment on. Mercy seemed to be a magnet for abuse. Some of it was due to her personality. She was cold and aloof. When she went to the playground she would stand apart so the other children would tease her and make her the brunt of their jokes. She didn't make sense. “She is strange. She is not one of us. Who could believe her,” they said.

 

Nobody on God's green earth can tell how Mercy ever met Justice much less how they fell in love. It must have been the God of God's Green earth that made it happen and saw them joined in wedlock. Sadly their's was a marriage like so many others, where at home there was constant argument and conflict but when they were out in society they were the perfect couple. Justice learned that whenever he went out he needed Mercy with him. Mercy drew Justice out of his home neighborhood and into the ghetto where they were received like king and queen.

 

But personally, Mercy and justice were failing. They felt like hypocrites between their social life and their home life. And they had not gotten married to fight and argue all the time. How could this story ever end with, “and they lived happily ever after.”

 

Then the unexpected happened. A baby was on the way. The surprise only gave them something else to disagree about and Justice slipped back into some of his meanness when Mercy was hindered by the pregnancy and couldn't accompany him.

 

But when Forgiveness came, miraculously, everything changed. Forgiveness made all their arguments evaporate. And they both went away satisfied that they had won. When Justice was feeling mean, Forgiveness soothed the anger. Whenever Mercy felt like she was being used by her friends she had only to remember Forgiveness and the pain evaporated. Whenever they took Forgiveness out she spread joy wherever she went among the rich or the poor.

Justice and Mercy felt like they finally were a true family. Life was good for them and Forgiveness. And the truth is, they lived happily ever after.