Bloom’s Taxonomy and ESLR Journal (Quarter 3)

During English class in the third quarter of this school year, my classmates and I studied and wrote poetry, and we worked on an assignment known as the Teen Life Project. This project included four different schools in Snow Lake (Canada), Cartegena (Columbia), Broadway (Virginia) and us here in Kuala Lumpur. This is a project in which you work with others from around the world and hasn’t been preformed before in this school. The project is about global issues that teenagers such as ourselves are concerned about. I found it to be a valuable experience and it gives us a chance to experience life in the real world where you work with people you may never see. In addition, all of us have created our own poetry book containing our poems from the quarter and most of us have attended a poetry night. At the poetry night, we read our poems and parents got to take a look at the books we created. In the paragraphs to follow, I will discuss each ESLR, identifying one feature that I did and didn’t do for most of them. Then I will use those aspects of each ESLR and go through the six main sections of Bloom’s Taxonomy. To put it briefly, I will use Bloom’s Taxonomy to illustrate my understanding of the ESLRs.

During my English class this past quarter, I was a Self-Directed Learner because I accepted responsibility for my own learning. Being responsible for my education and doing my work voluntarily without being asked or nagged is my personal definition of this skill. Being responsible includes self-checking my poems and self-editing each one. Equally important, this means that I am prepared for class each day by completing work such as homework. I feel that I accepted responsibility for my own learning when I went over poems I had written to make it sound better. I also spent time on each poem to make sure that it was done to my full ability. Moreover, I always had rough drafts of poems and information for my Teen Life Project whenever it was required. Although this is true, I never went above what was asked of me when it came to the Teen Life Project; I’d only do what is required. I believe that by accepting responsibility for my own learning, I am also helping myself to continually assess, evaluate, and adjust work to maintain high standards. This is because if I self-edit my work, I am changing it to improve it and make it of higher quality. Next time, I could enhance this skill by being more involved in the Teen Life Project and spending more of my spare time on it. By doing this I would have been trying to help myself learn and understand more about my Teen Life Project topic, poverty. Therefore, I did really well, but not perfectly with accepting responsibility for my own learning. I’ve done everything required of me, but not anything above that.

However, there were some aspects of the Self-Directed Learner ESLR that I didn’t demonstrate in the previous quarter. One of these is taking creative risks in developing untried ideas. This means that I attempt to do something out of the ordinary; I take a risk that may not pay off. A time when I didn’t do this was when I was working on my poetry book. Personally, I think that I didn’t really work too far outside the box. I mainly added some illustrations, photographs, and some dried plants. I could have demonstrated my creative talents to convey ideas by taking a few pictures and using Adobe Photoshop to mix them together. By doing this I could have created a new image for my book that couldn’t be taken with a camera. I could have also made some pages glow-in-the-dark and maybe make it 3-D by creating pop-ups on some pages. I could take more creative risks in the future by adding the extra features to my poetry that I described above. If I had done these, I would have taken a few creative risks. Overall, I did quite horribly on taking creative risks; I would consider it one of my weaknesses. The reason for this is I always do very common pieces of work that don’t usually catch people’s attention.

So far this year, I have also been an Academic Achiever since I continually assess, evaluate, and adjust work to maintain high standards. Revising and going over work a few times to make sure that it is the finest quality work that you can do is what this means to me. When we were writing poetry, I displayed this aspect of Academic Achiever. I would usually do a rough draft of my poem in class. Later, I’d take it home and type it up neatly. I’d also revise and edit it by changing some words to better convey meaning and rearranging some lines. Finally, I’d get someone else, my teacher, to look it over so that I can get an opinion that isn’t my own. With that last view, I made a more or less final draft. I feel that I am also monitoring, adjusting, and documenting work in progress. The reason why I feel this way is because by always reviewing your work and making it your best, you’re also adjusting it. Additionally, you’ll probably keep all your drafts, therefore learning from areas you could do better on so that you don’t have to wait till the final draft. I believe that I could have revised and corrected some of my poems further to make them better. If I had done this I would have continually assessed, evaluated, and adjusted my work to main high standards far better. On the whole, I did pretty good, but not great with this skill because I checked and tidied up my work quite a bit, but not to my full abilities.

On the other hand, I wasn’t an Academic Achiever because I didn’t access information from a variety of sources. In a more straightforward definition, this means that I accumulate information from a number of different places. I didn’t display this skill because during the poetry unit and the Teen Life Project, I only found information from the internet and other people. For instance, when I learnt about figurative language and different types of poetry, it was my teacher, Mr. R that was teaching. I didn’t refer to books or the internet at all. However, during the Teen Life project, I only looked at information on my topic, poverty, that was on the internet. I believe that if I had accessed information from a variety of sources by retrieving information from the internet, people, books, and documentaries, I would have also been a Critical Thinker. By acquiring information from various sources, I’m also processing and analyzing it. Thus, the precise aspect of Critical Thinker that I would have hit would have been gathering, analyzing, and processing information from a variety of sources. I feel that I could have retrieved knowledge from a larger array of areas. The reason for this is over the course of the whole quarter, I’d only learnt from the internet and other people. However, I could have still gotten information from books, documentaries and other places. If I had done this then I would have accessed information from a variety of sources better. In the future, I could try to use at least three or four different sources each quarter. I did satisfactory on this part of Academic Achiever because I didn’t collect information from all the places available to me, but I did get it from a few of those places.

In addition to these ESLRs I have also been an Effective Communicator. Whenever I understand and convey written, oral, and visual information using appropriate media, I’m being an Effective Communicator. Understanding the above information that is given to you by others is another way of saying this. However, just as importantly, I am also meant to successfully communicate that information to them. During the Teen Life Project, the poetry unit, and the poetry night, I did this. In the Teen Life Project my teammates and I shared written information about our topic, poverty, with each other. I also gave them a picture that I had taken of poverty. During the poetry unit and night, we worked on talking with a clear loud voice at a paced speed. In class, we’d stand on a chair in the front of the room and read one of our poems aloud. To me, this was fairly terrifying activity since I don’t enjoy public speaking. As I’d step upon the plastic chair and rise above everyone else, I felt the nerve wrecking tingle. My desire to stand normally could not be fulfilled. We had to read our poems slowly with pronunciation while projecting our voice throughout the room. Having to stand up so high with my classmates eyes glued to me was just as dreadful as having to present a project and I found the whole thing quite intimidating. Additionally, I listened to many of the poems written by my peers and tried to comprehend them. I’d try to decrypt the literal meaning hidden behind the many figurative layers. By doing this I was conveying and understand oral messages. If I performed this skill, I am also demonstrating the skills of effective collaboration. This is because understanding and conveying different messages is crucial in group activities. To perfect this skill, I could try to get some visual information and understand what it’s trying to say since I haven’t done that yet. All in all, I think that I did fairly well on this since I performed most of the skills listed above, but all of them.

Although I have been an acceptable Effective Communicator, I wasn’t a perfect one because I didn’t fully demonstrate the skills of effective collaboration. This is saying that when I work in groups, I balance my contribution of ideas with the amount of time I sit back and listen to others. Additionally, this means that I should take the lead sometimes while giving others a turn as well. I didn’t really do this when we were working on our Teen Life Project. My opinions and ideas were rarely given; most of the time, I just left it up to others. All I did was what was asked of me and I didn’t really take any initiative. I think that if I had displayed this skill I would have also demonstrated the ability to work both independently and collaboratively. This is part of being an Academic Achiever. The reason for this is that by participating well in group activities I am working collaboratively, which is a part of both skills. In the long run, I feel that to grow in the skill of demonstrating effective collaboration, I could set a target to take control a bit more and give more of my ideas and opinions. In general, I did quite poorly on this aspect of being an Effective Communicator. The reason for this assumption is that I handed out ideas like a stingy inventor when performing group activities.

Second lastly, I have been a Critical Thinker in English class since I built meaning and understanding using prior knowledge and new information. Expanding your understanding by using old knowledge such as experiences and previous work in addition to new information from school or research is what I believe this to mean. I used new knowledge when I was taught poetry and figurative language. Furthermore, I received new information from the internet when I was researching poverty for my Teen Life Project. However, in addition to finding new information, I did use a bit of my past work and knowledge to help me. For example, I used what I knew about poetry from elementary school and the ballads I’d written in seventh grade. I had already learnt a bit about end rhymes and haikus. I believe that by demonstrating this skill, I’m also continually assessing, evaluating, and adjusting work to maintain high standards. This is because by looking back on old work and learning to do better next time, it’s like I’m improving work that I’ve already done. Next time, to advance in this skill, I will keep my notes and pieces of work from previous classes and use them. For example, I could look over them to remind me of important information and mistakes I made in earlier years so that I learn from my past experiences. Overall, I think I did acceptable because I got new information on poetry and the information I found on the internet about poverty. However, I barely used any old information to help me out over the last quarter.

Finally, I have been an Involved Citizen since I interact respectfully with people of diverse cultures. To me this means that I don’t insult people because of their culture, and I respect everyone. Additionally, I work together with them and I treat them as I would treat any other person. I demonstrated this during our Teen Life Projects when we were working with people from a few different places around the globe. I was never ignorant of their race or culture, and I didn’t criticize or insult them just because their point of view was different from mine. In my mind they were also all equals with the same rights. By interacting respectfully with people of diverse cultures, I think that I’m also demonstrating awareness and respect for the rights of others. This is because I don’t favor some of my group members over others. Instead all are given the same freedom to do as they wish. In the future, to interact more respectfully with people of diverse cultures, I could ask others about their culture and way of living. By doing this, I would get to understand others better and what their life is like. So, instead of just treating others respectfully, I would get a sense of what it’s like to be in their shoes. Generally, I think that I did really well since I never disrespected anyone. However, I can still improve to better understand others.

Since I’ve gone through this entire process three times now, I find it much easier to comprehend. The whole idea of ESLRs and Bloom’s Taxonomy is much simpler now and not so much of a bizarre Einstein theory. While this is true, it still took me quite some time and thought to churn out this journal and look back on the past few weeks. Although this is a very tedious process, it helps me see which parts of the ESLRs I’m doing and which parts I still need to work on.