Enhancing Order Thinking Skills Through A Film Biography
Reinforcement is being right.
B. F. Skinner
Traditional language teaching methods are slowly evolving in order to blend with current learners’ environment. As consequences, curricula are being altered and are customized to be attuned to the breakthroughs of technology. Combining media forms as springboards with the aid of multi-media tools yield the possibilities of technological instructions’ facilitation on practically designed activities.
Teachers today need to be classroom innovators by not necessarily demanding complicated sets of technological tools from educational institutions they serve, but with the presence of basic technologies, mentors situate learning setting the most practical ways they can.
One of the simple ways to perform this is through the use of a film clip from the cyberspace’s YouTube which directs manipulation of Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning revised as Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy by Churches (2007). Integrating this in English language teaching aims to strengthen the learners’ order thinking skills which starts from remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating acquired concepts or knowledge. While these are being employed, technical activities are simultaneously applied.
These suggested students’ activities that follow through a mini-biographical film of Walt Disney, primarily aim to employ the order thinking skills and to elucidate how these sub skills in every order thinking skills are being manipulated through learners’ viewing, listening, speaking, reading and writing aided by appropriate language targets prescribed by the teacher who acts as a facilitator. The learning objectives of these activities are defined by the sub skills.
1. Remembering
Bookmarking the URL of Walt Disney’s autobiography for easy access Finding the site of the given auto-biography to enable previews Copying or recording the passage into a file Listening and viewing the passage in a language laboratory or school studio Listing and sequencing important dates of Walt Disney’s life Listing and ordering important events in the film Tabulating events and dates through a Microsoft word or a PowerPoint Telling a story about Disney’s life orally or through a recording Labeling dates on the timeline of Disney through varied forms of graphic organizers Labeling events on the timeline of Walt Disney through the use of shapes and figures from the Microsoft word applications Numbering the events of Walt Disney’s life as they occur in the film bio while listening Quoting significant lines from the film bio and presenting this through scanned pictures, film scene excerpts, sketches or drawings projected onscreen Naming important films cited with their displayed promotional posters obtained from the Internet Locating Walt Disney’s travels through projected googled maps onscreen
2. Understanding
Relating the dates and events in a PowerPoint presentation Inferring through the character’s important dates and events gathered with matching pictures downloaded from the internet Interpreting the graphic organizer provided by the teacher projected onscreen Interpreting the graphic organizer personally constructed displayed onscreen Diagramming the events through semantic mapping styles Classifying the films cited in the biography through a column chart Gathering important facts to be presented by a PowerPoint Summarizing Disney’s life through a single paragraph onscreen to be deliberated
3. Applying
Playing the Auto-biography and presenting a timeline of his story Using semantic mapping tools to relate concepts in the short movie Demonstrating ideas from the film through imagery or sketches Presenting a gist of his biography through sketches Presenting a gist of his life through scanned pictures obtained from magazines Presenting his biography through photographs to represent ideas Demonstrating ideas through scanned pictures for slide shows Charting and completing the sequential significant events of Disney’s life. Completing and explaining a paragraph about Disney’s life displayed onscreen Choosing an event and presenting its significance Acting out some scenes from the film and simultaneously playing the original narrative Constructing a recorded narrative about the biography
4. Analyzing
Questioning by formulating series of questions according to levels or dimensions to obtain details as a whole Ordering the works of Walt Disney according to dates and places Organizing the events through PowerPoint presentations Presenting a slideshow featuring the works of Mr. Disney Classifying Disney films according to genre and showing some remarkable scenes Classifying Walt Disney films according to production years Deconstructing Disney’s Biography through graphic organizers Linking the timeline with his produced films using posters Ordering events through a designed timeline or a flow chart Outlining biography by dates, places, events and significant works in films
5. Evaluating
Editorializing his life with cartoons for deliberation Preparing a rubric to be displayed on the board for agreeing and disagreeing the significant events and accomplishments of the character Rating the biography in terms of its technical factors and contents Posting some illustrations that allude to the events of his life’s story Revising earlier structures that appropriately enumerate the events of Disney life Justifying Disney films’ advantages through a simulated talk show Reviewing the film by a conceptualized list of criteria Surveying and monitoring classmates’ opinions regarding Disney movies. Posting still pictures of Disney characters and captioning the pictures Re-framing titles of his movies through a projected screen Revising the film into a pure narrative to convey sequential events
6. Creating
Simulating Disney’s life with the use of improvised audio-visual materials Structuring a script through the use of script formats from the Web Publishing essays on Walt Disney’s life through online journals or blogs Creating animations to showcase some popular Disney film characters Blogging an essay about significant events Composing an article on Disney to be published in your school paper or in the Internet Producing a story by filming some instances of Disney’s life Orating a speech composition regarding his remarkable works through mixing with sound and visual effects in the background Constructing a talk show about Disney in a school studio or in the class Simulating Disney characters in the classroom by groups with technical effects Constructing a narrative summary through written or recorded form Producing theatrical performances about him through a script Monitoring opinions on the advantages of his films among classmates
A stronger perception about the rationale of these suggested tasks can be further explained through an example presumed to be a teacher’s discretion from a language program being patterned to. Under remembering as the lowest order thinking skills, students will tabulate events and dates after seeing the mini-biography. This type of activity deals with sub skills particularly, tabulating and telling which further imply the activities’ objectives and prescribe the appropriate grammar to be employed such as time expressions, prepositions, conjunctions, simple past tense forms of the verb as well as the involved skills such as writing, speaking skills engagement not to mention the viewing and listening skills that have been used earlier. Additional digital aspects of this lesson are further supplemented by the use of PowerPoint or Microsoft Word to create outputs which are facilitated by an external disc where the file has been saved, a computer to enable the file and a projector to display the students’ works after Googling the main source of the materials chosen for this lesson.
To summarize, the following factors can sustain and prove the possibilities of these proposed practical applications of digital taxonomy in language teaching: order thinking skills (digital order thinking skills) and sub skills, objectives, grammar focuses, authentic springboard (mini-biography from the YouTube), macro skills, instructional technology tools (website, external disc, computer, and projector) and outputs. All these mobilize the possibilities to perform these suggested activities.