As teachers, we want our students to go through the steps and understand what it is that we’re teaching them. We want them to be able to take what we’ve given them, and put it to the test in recreating the content in their own way, whether it be a project or helping other students simply understand. In order to do this, we can have help and use different ways of making sure that our students use their full brain capacity.
Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) has four levels that educators go through to educate their students: Recall and Reproduction, Basic Application of Skills and Concepts, Strategic Thinking, and Extended Thinking. Bloom’s Taxonomy is another set of objectives that educators set for students: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create.
Webb’s Depth of Knowledge and Bloom’s Taxonomy are both large ideas within the schools. They each tell us what can be done on each level of learning and understanding. With both of these concepts, they both require you to remember what it was that you learned, and do your best to show that you understand it. They require you to apply the skills that you learned, and analyze to have a deeper understanding. They require you to evaluate and to use strategic thinking and reasoning. Then, lastly, they require you to put your knowledge to the test and create something to show that you have an extensive amount of knowledge about the particular topic.
Webb’s DOK and Bloom’s Taxonomy are essentially full of the same ideas, and that effects my way of teaching. Bloom’s Taxonomy is more well known, as far as my education goes, and there are more steps to get the students to the understanding that we, as teachers, desire for them. Webb’s DOK takes Bloom’s Taxonomy and includes almost all of those dimensions within the four levels that Webb has. In order to be successful in the classroom as an educator, I need to make sure that I fully understand how Bloom’s Taxonomy correlates to Webb’s Depth of Knowledge. We need to look at the DOK not as a target, but a ceiling. This isn’t something that we aim for, because if it was a target, there’s a chance that we could never reach it.
There will be new strategies and information that I will need to obtain in order to continue making sure my students have the tools they need to succeed. For example, in regards to teaching writing, we will need to start them with brainstorming, and recalling the right vocabulary that they need for that specific assignment. Students write what they know, and what they learn. We could give them proper worksheets to help them brainstorm their thoughts. We can give them worksheets that would help with organizing the structure of their paper that they are writing, and keep track of their notes that they use. We could work with peer editing, where the students could work on their editing and revising skills. With the help of other students and their teacher, they are able to see if their paper they’re writing makes sense, or that their is a flow to it. They can make sure that proper grammar and punctuation are used. In the end, they’ll be able to create a paper that they worked through the levels for.
Teaching students with Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, I believe, could be a bit more complex, but more beneficial for the educators and the students. It sets the students up to think deeper, essentially. It takes them deeper than the surface, and the deeper the thinking, the better. When leading students in discussions, we want them to be rigorous. We want them to participate because this discussion is about something they know, and something they are familiar with, because they have be taught it. Before discussions, start talking to your students about the content. Get their memory going, and have them throw out related terms, and go from there. Before the start of a new lesson, see what your students know about it. Not everyone has the same depth of knowledge, but we, as educators, can try and get them there.
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