Students will most likely engage in these tasks because the Smart Notebooks are colourful and interesting, with relevant pictures and videos; and have clear instructions and questions. Clear instructions are part of the Quality Learning Environment (Explicit Quality Criteria) according to the Quality Teaching Model (QTM). As "digital natives", most students will be comfortable working and reading from a computer screen (Lyell, 2012a). They will enjoy Youtube clips such as Horrible Histories, which they may already be familiar with.
Within the project we tried to ensure we were always pushing students up Bloom's Taxonomy towards Higher Order Thinking with Create and Assess activities (Marsh & Hart, 2011, p.139). We also used Lower Order Thinking tasks such as Categorize, Sort and Describe, usually at the beginning of lessons. The Higher Order Thinking tasks were usually later in the lesson or in the assignment. Higher Order Thinking is an element of Intellectual Quality in the QTM.
The assignment was Project-based Learning. PBL is a "comprehensive set of real, complex problems that provide learners with opportunities to acquire knowledge, understanding and skills" (Killen, 2009, p.246). Students needed to complete a model of an Ancient Egyptian house, and write a short story about life as an Ancient Egyptian person. I think these kinds of tasks lead students to the Create level of Bloom's Taxonomy. The work is challenging because students will have to imagine themselves as an Ancient Egyptian person, and use their linguistic skills to bring this person to life.
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