Going Beyond “Identify a Story’s Problem”

Here is an embarrassingly low-level pair of questions I asked my students:

1. What was the problem in this story?
2. How was the problem solved?

Now, it is technically a sequence of questions. But my students are stuck at the lowest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I’m going to get the same responses from even my most brilliant students.

So, once a student can identify the problem and solution in a story, what’s next?

Aim For Analyze

I always want to get to Analyze on Bloom’s (which I wrote about here). Analyze will naturally unlock the higher levels of thinking.

Analyze means that we’re comparing, contrasting, and categorizing. So I want students to think of other stories with similar problems. In the story “Stella Luna,” for example, a baby bat lives with birds and feels out of place. Your students will easily think of other characters who face this same problem.

Here’s what we have now:

1. What was the problem in the story? What was the solution to that problem?
2. Think of at least four other stories with a similar problem.

Up To Evaluate

Next, I’d ask students to Evaluate the stories they thought of. And I don’t want to ask a dull question like “Which story was best?” Let’s sharpen our question and ask something like:

• Which story with a similar problem is the most unusual?
• Which of these stories would Stella Luna be most surprised by?
• Which of these stories’ problems had the most unrealistic solution?

But just pick one to give your students. Choice is overrated! We want quality – not quantity.

Here’s my updated sequence:

1. What was the problem in the story? What was the solution to that problem?
2. Think of at least four other stories with a similar problem.
3. Which of those stories would surprise Stella Luna the most?

Synthesize

Now that we’ve hit Remember / Understand, Analyze, and Evaluate, we can give students a Synthesize-level task. My students will rewrite our main story, changing the setting or plot. This will lead to a new version of Stella Luna.

In my class, we call this a “remix.” We did it with “The Three Little Pigs” early in the year. I will never forget the version one student wrote called, “The Three Rival Pork Merchants.” It was set in medieval Europe. Now, most students created less whimsical versions. I had lots of “Three Big Dogs.” Some students didn’t even reach Part Four.

But all of that is okay. That is what differentiation looks like. Advanced students should create work that is clearly beyond their peers. All students should not get through every step. When you differentiate, the end results should be obviously different.

The Final Sequence

So we took “What is the story’s problem? How did they solve it?” and expanded it into a four-part sequence of tasks:

1. What was the problem in the story? What was the solution to that problem?
2. Think of at least four other stories with a similar problem.
3. Which of those stories would surprise Stella Luna the most?
4. Now, take the story Stella Luna and rewrite it. The basic problem should be the same, but the setting, plot, and characters can change as much as you’d like.

I guarantee you that you won’t have the “Mr. Byrd, I’m done. What do I do now?” problem (more on “early finishers” here). If a student finishes their remix, they can design the cover, build an advertising campaign, or record an audiobook. They can read their peers’ stories and give each one a unique award. This type of task naturally scales up and up!

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