Writing Rockstars Blog 

So much to teach, so little time!

Isn’t that always the case? Whether you’re at home teaching ten different subjects to several children or teaching one subject to dozens of them, as a teacher, you’re always pressed for time.

So how do we get around that without taking shortcuts and sacrificing the quality of our instruction? The answer is to combine teaching two subjects at once. Yes, there are many ways to do this! We’ll discuss three in this article.

One way is to think multisensory. Often, while we’re so focused on teaching math, science, reading, and writing, other subjects like visual art and music are overlooked. Why not combine them? Integrate them with your core subjects. Kids can listen to a piece of music or look at a work of art and describe it in writing or in discussion. When studying history, they can look at the art and music created during that time period. Let’s not forget the mathematics and science involved in architecture and engineering, particularly the accomplishments of ancient Greece and Rome! Where would we be without the stadium and the amphitheater?

Second, combine study skills practice with content learning. Study skills are very important for our kids because they use the same strategies to solve problems and tackle new projects throughout their lives. A foundation in study skills is essential to a well-rounded education. Kids need to be taught specific strategies on how to take notes, how to solve math problems, how to approach research, how to write papers, and so on. Study skills practice can be applied to any subject at any grade level, and it’s always highly valuable.

Last, you can always work in critical thinking development into everything! A quick and easy way to do this is simply ask your kids a critical thinking question or two about the subject they’re working on. Sometimes it’s hard to think up your own questions and avoid asking the same few questions over and over. My fallback for great critical thinking questions is a quick peek at Bloom’s Taxonomy of questions. Benjamin Bloom was an educator who did many studies on teaching and learning and eventually developed a hierarchy of learning objectives. Here is a handy chart of question stems and verbs adapted from Bloom’s work by a group of teachers and posted on the internet. Bloom’s Taxonomy of questions is found in many books and online sources, but this pdf is especially user friendly. Attribution is at the bottom of the pdf.

Please click here to get your copy.

As you look at the chart, you’ll see it progresses from easier question types (knowledge, comprehension) to more complicated ones (evaluation). All you have to do is pick one question from whichever section you want, apply it to whatever subject your kids are working on and ask away! These questions work for all ages, grade levels and content subjects.