Why a Playbook?

Midway Teaching & Learning, along with district and campus administrators, created this instructional playbook to guide teachers on instructional strategies that provide the best opportunities for higher cognitive thinking. While district curriculum and assessment components are well-defined, the instructional decisions we make on a daily basis require teachers to draw on experience, expertise, and research in best practice to ensure the desired depth of thinking and engagement is presented. 

What does it mean to be educated? 

Benjamin Bloom said that being "educated" involves students being changed in their thinking, feelings, or actions through the educative process. Specifically, in the cognitive domain, being educated means progressing through different levels of intellectual abilities and skills, moving from simple remembering to complex problem-solving and judgment. To describe this change, he identified a Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, which classifies these goals, emphasizing a progression through categories such as Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. The highest levels, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation, represent complex problem-solving, critical judgment, and the creation of new ideas. We want students to experience a change in thinking and we believe rigorous and engaging instructional practices build the best opportunity for this change to happen.

The model that influences our instructional environment

In 1949, Ralph Tyler published the model for designing curriculum and instruction. The model had four steps: 

• determining objectives, 

• identifying learning experiences, 

• organizing experiences, 

• and evaluating objectives

Our instructional environment is still influenced by this model today. We operate within a Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment (CIA) Triad. We determine what curricular objective is to be taught, we decide how we will teach that content to the students, and in the end or along the way, we assess whether or not students learned the objectives of the content. 

Curriculum: The curriculum component addresses "how we know what content we will teach". In the state of Texas and in Midway, we know that the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) are the framework basis for what is taught, along with district-identified resources and documents. 

Assessment: The assessment component focuses on "how we assess whether or not students have learned the objectives". The STAAR assessment, for instance, is designed to measure the extent to which a student has learned and can apply the knowledge and skills defined in the TEKS. It aligns every item directly to the TEKS in effect for the tested grade and subject. We repeat this process with unit exams and formative assessments along the way.

Instruction: The instruction component addresses "how we identify and organize the instructional activities". While the curriculum (TEKS) and assessments (STAAR) are clearly defined and aligned to specific cognitive levels and frameworks for thinking, there is a need for more explicit guidance on instructional practices. Specifically, to support instructional practices that will help us enhance cognitive thinking in the classroom. 

The Need for an Instructional Playbook (Midway Mindset)

Despite the clear objectives set by the curriculum and measured by assessments, there's a recognized need to ensure that instructional environments consistently foster higher cognitive growth and deeper engagement. This is where the Midway Mindset, a district-wide structure to promote research-based instructional practices, becomes crucial. This mindset includes specific elements designed to guide instruction toward higher-order thinking:

Student-centered learning goals are defined to align with specific Bloom's levels, such as analyzing or evaluating.

It encourages Student-Generated Questions to support higher-order thinking, such as analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

It promotes Collaboration for problem-solving and idea sharing, targeting the Application and Analysis levels.

It emphasizes Creativity to generate original ideas, as well as critical thinking and problem-solving to analyze, evaluate, and apply reasoning to complex tasks.

It acknowledges the role of Cognitive Dissonance in pushing students to think harder, ask questions, and figure things out, leading to Analysis, Evaluation, and Creation.

By implementing the Midway Mindset instructional playbook, we can systematically address the depth of thinking and engagement desired in our instructional environment, ensuring teachers have clear strategies to facilitate the cognitive growth needed for students to progress to the highest levels of cognition. 

Resources

Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of. Educational Objectives, 250.

Dewey, J. (1930). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education (Vol. 8). New York: Macmillan.

Tyler, R. W. (2013). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. In Curriculum studies reader E2 (pp. 60-68). Routledge.