Jiva Logo gets HOT

In my last post I wrote about the Class VI students and their "symbol" project. This morning they were to come to my office at 8am to tell me what the Jiva logo meant. I suddenly realized this morning that I had a teacher training session. OK, no problem. I used it as an opportunity to host a joint learning session.

There were 7 teachers and 6 students. I did a recap with the students about our previous day's discussion on the symbols of the Indus Valley civilization. As I walked them through the summary, I pointed out side by side to the teachers how I was making use of HOTS (higher order thinking skills). HOTS refers to deep level thinking--not just asking fact-based questions--that is meant to get students to think actively and critically. It is a slap in the face of teaching methods that require students to memorize, especially without really understanding what they are memorizing.

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom devised a taxonomy of educational objectives that demonstrate the hierarchical levels of such thinking. In my impromptu, self-commentated class, I demonstrated each level, along with the questions I had been asking the students (or was planning to ask):

(from lowest to highest)
1. Knowlege - What is a symbol? Give an example of a symbol.
2. Comprehension - What does this symbol mean?
3. Application - Come up with symbols that match different feelings (e.g., strength, grace, power, hard work, etc.)
4. Analysis - Why do you think we used the Lotus/Chakra for the Jiva logo? Why do you think the people of the Indus Valley civilization used those particular symbols?
5. Synthesis - What symbol would you use to represent yourself? Or, imagine you were a (clothing designer, furniture maker, etc.). What logo/symbol would you use?
6 Evaluation - Given an example of any symbol: Do you think this symbol is appropriate for this purpose? Why or why not?

Most teachers do not venture beyond questions related to knowledge or comprehension. However, as you can see, things start getting interesting only after these two levels. They unlock the imagination create the potential for all sorts of learning opportunities to happen.

The teachers gained quite a bit from the session--and I think the students enjoyed the experience (especially witnessing their teachers as learners). In the end, we did achieve our objective of exploring why Jiva uses the Lotus/Chakra symbol, but it seemed like the session today wound up being about a lot more than that.