By Dr. Martin Horejsi
The heart and soul of education is found in verbs, but so often it seems that nouns are the business of teaching. Nouns are expensive. Nouns are proprietary. Nouns have a short shelf life. Above all, nouns limit our thinking.
When we teach in verbs, the knowledge, ideas, facts, processes, and reasons transcend time because they are not forever chained to the nouns of today. Verbs are actions that encourage thicker, deeper understandings much more so than traditional, memorized answers. The problem is that teaching verbs often need more time to mature, more upfront preparation, and more patience by both the teacher and the student.
The key to teaching with verbs is keeping your eye on the payout in terms of student comprehension, enthusiasm for learning, and content retention. A further bonus for the extra effort required to teach with verbs is that the teacher’s personal excitement for teaching is rejuvenated.
Reaching into the past, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a fine hunting ground for verbs. In ascending taxonomic level, this list of verbs provides the first step in freeing the educational experience from its addiction to nouns. Consider the following sea of verbs:
Arrange, define, describe, duplicate, identify, label, list, match, memorize, name, order, outline, recognize, relate, recall, repeat, reproduce, select, state, classify, convert, defend, discuss, distinguish, estimate, explain, express, extend, generalize, identify, indicate, infer, locate, paraphrase, predict, recognize, rewrite, report, restate, review, select, summarize, translate, apply, change, choose, compute, demonstrate, discover, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, manipulate, modify, operate, practice, predict, prepare, produce, relate schedule, show, sketch, solve, use write, analyze, appraise, breakdown, calculate, categorize, classify, compare, contrast, criticize, derive, diagram, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, identify, illustrate, infer, interpret, model, outline, point out, question, relate, select, separate, subdivide, test, arrange, assemble, categorize, collect, combine, comply, compose, construct, create, design, develop, devise, explain, formulate, generate, plan, prepare, propose, rearrange, reconstruct, relate, reorganize, revise, rewrite, set up, summarize, synthesize, tell, write, appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose, compare, conclude, contrast, defend, describe, discriminate, estimate, evaluate, explain, judge, justify, interpret, relate, predict, rate, select, summarize, support, value.
Each and every verb expresses excitement, action, depth, and emotion. The verbs can be supported, even amplified, with technology. Some examples of verb-friendly tech include Google’s collaborative suite of office utilities, probeware, and data sensors that provide wireless connectivity to multiple devices, network-connected microscopes, blogging, shared online photo albums, and, of course, social media.
The sharing capabilities of Google documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and forms eat verbs for breakfast with all their collaborative avenues across the entire Bloom’s Taxonomy spectrum. In addition to the conventional uses of the collaborative features, a further depth can be experienced through comments for a rolling discussion alongside but not within the original context.
The new crop of wireless microscopes supports streaming imagery to any connected device. Pictures can be captured at the microscope, the tablet, or the desktop computer. In some cases, since the imagery is streaming, connected devices can even take video selectively and on demand. Moreover, the captured images feed into the devices’ standard photo programs, which in turn offer uploading to online services.
The opportunities for verbs are just as rich when the science class uses wireless probeware and sensors. If there is physical existence, then it is possible to measure something. And nothing spells learning better than the verbs of inquiry!
When students are tasked to blog about life as a historical character for language arts, civics, or history, the nouns take a back seat while the verbs fly around the classroom. Sure, there are the nouns of the period, but what do the nouns mean in the context of time, culture, and implication? Only verbs can fill those holes in knowledge.
How about math? One of the most noun-friendly subjects has a few tricks up its sleeve when it comes to calculating in verbs. Teachers profess that it is more the process than the product, but isn’t the product the majority of the assessment? On the other hand, the verbs of math lead to profound understandings that convert synapses into experiences and feelings rather than facts and quantities. Big numbers become scary in their mass; small numbers try the imagination. And formulas explain other worlds. Forcing nouns into the imagination of young students delays the experience of understanding that most constructivist teaching desires above all else.
I shouldn’t be so hard on nouns, as they represent so much of our current world. Nouns are our comfort food that we will reminisce about in the future. Nouns can provide teachers with a familiar, retro landscape and fond memories of learning in a different time. But unless we can transcend the lull of nouns and embrace the verbs of education, we will forever be teaching to a student from a different time.
Dr. Martin Horejsi is an associate professor of Instructional Technology and Science Education in the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Montana, Missoula. He was previously a middle and high school science teacher, and his areas of specialty include mobile technologies, collaborative applications, digital creative expression, standard and nonstandard digital assessments, wireless data collection, hybrid and blended learning environments, and innovative classroom uses of consumer technologies. Dr. Horejsi is a board member of the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE), writes a column and blogs for the National Science Teachers Association called Science 2.0, and has been blogging about meteorites and space science since 2002 in his Meteorite-Times.com column titled “The Accretion Desk.”
