Thanks, Bernie, for sharing this transcript.  I look forward to reviewing the discussion more thoroughly and pondering the changes you are developing to guide WQ development.

Though you state that the new verbs you are using to describe the stages were not intended to relate to Bloom's Taxonomy, on first blush I find that the new verbiage does provide a strong cognitive hook to Bloom.   My experiences with pre-service and novice teachers has shown that they often do not have enough background knowledge of teaching and pedagogy to be able to recognize or scaffold cognitive development for students.  Hence, they tend to develop products that rely on "remembering, understanding, applying" type learning.  Another, difficulty many teachers have is an inability to discern the types of activities that support each stage - especially those that require more complex levels of student thinking.  Perhaps this is because most candidates are given with so little instruction in constructivism (and its close sisters inquiry and PBL) nor have they had any personal learning experiences that employ these strategies. 

I have found that the Bloom/verb/assessment charts in Google images are an excellent job aid for helping teachers to identify where their objectives for a lesson fit in the Bloom scaffold either by product to be assessed or verbs used. See: cstep.csumb.edu/Obj_tutorial/bloomwheel3.gif for an example.

Perhaps a graphic organizer similar to this would help to illuminate the components for each of the new WQ categories.  I could see one examining the exemplars at each stage for the content of the objectives/goals "verbs" and assessment "products".

Pam

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