from The TeachThought staff
In one sentence, Bloom’s taxonomy is a hierarchical arrangement of cognitive skills that canamong countless other applications, help teachers teach and students learn.
For example, Bloom’s Taxonomy can be used to:
– creating assessments
– framework discussions
– plan lessons (see 249 Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs for Critical Thinking)
– assessment of the complexity of the tasks
– design of study cards
– online course development, project-based learning (often via ideas for project-based learning)
– self-assessment
Look How to teach with Bloom’s Taxonomy for more reading.
How Bloom’s Taxonomy is useful for teachers
We looked ways to use Bloom’s Taxonomy– and there are many reasons for the popularity of Bloom’s Taxonomy (which probably deserve their own research paper). So far, it’s clear that many educators love Bloom’s because, among other virtues, it gives them a way to think about their teaching—and the subsequent learning of their students.
As mentioned above, the framework can be used to create assessments, assess the complexity of assignments, increase the rigor of a lesson, simplify an activity to help personalize learning, design summative assessment, plan project-based learning, frame group discussion, and more. Because it simply provides an order for cognitive behavior, it can be applied to almost anything. (You can see an example here –Numerical Verbs of Bloom’s Taxonomy.)
The image above visually demonstrates the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy as a spectrum rather than a hierarchy, leaving room for “power verbs” that can act as synonyms (and thus activity ideas) for teachers planning lessons and modules.
There are six levels in Bloom’s taxonomy.
See also How to write lesson objectives using Bloom’s Taxonomy
The 6 levels of Bloom’s taxonomy
1. The first level is to remember.
Example activities in remembering level: memorize a poem, recall state capitals, memorize math formulas
2. The second level is to understand.
Example activities in understanding level: organize the animal kingdom based on a given framework, illustrate the difference between a rectangle and a square, summarize the plot of a simple story
3. The third level is to apply.
Example activities in Application level: use a formula to solve a problem, choose a design to achieve a goal, reconstruct the passage of a new law through a given government/system
See also Examples of analogies for critical thinking
4. The fourth level is to analyze.
Example activities in Analysis level: identify the ‘parts of’ democracy explain how the steps of the scientific process work together identify why a machine doesn’t work
5. The fifth level is to evaluate.
Example activities in Assessment level: make a judgment regarding an ethical dilemma, interpret the meaning of a given law of physics, illustrate the relative value of technological innovation in a particular environment – a tool that helps restore topsoil, for example.
6. The sixth and highest level is Creation.
Example activities in Creation level: design a new solution to an “old” problem that honors/acknowledges previous failures delete the least useful arguments in a persuasive essay write a poem based on a given theme and tone
A Brief History of Bloom’s Taxonomy Revisions
Bloom’s Taxonomy was created by Benjamin Bloom in 1956, published as a kind of classification of learning outcomes and objectives that has been used in the more than half century since then for everything from framing numerical tasks and evaluating applications to writing questions and assessments.
The original sequence of cognitive skills was knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The framework was revised in 2001 by Lorin Anderson and David Kratvoll, giving Bloom’s Taxonomy Revised.
The most significant change in the cognitive domain was the removal of “Synthesis” and the addition of “Creation” as the highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy. And because it’s at the highest level, the implication is that it’s the most complex or demanding cognitive skill—or at least represents a kind of pinnacle for cognitive tasks.
