http://www.teachthought.com/learning/using-blooms-taxonomy-21st-century-4-strategies-forteaching/
by Terry Heick
Bloom’s Taxonomy can be a powerful tool to transform teaching and learning.
By design, it focuses attention away from content and instruction, and instead emphasizes the
“cognitive events” in the mind of a child. And this is no small change.
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For decades, education reform has been focused on curriculum, assessment, instruction, and more
recently standards, and data, with these efforts only bleeding over into how students think briefly, and
by chance. This means that the focus of finite teacher and school resources are not on promoting
thinking and understanding, but rather what kinds of things students are going to be thinking about and
how they’ll prove they understand them.
1. Use Every Level.
There is nothing wrong with lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.
Memorization is much-maligned as a waste of time that dumbs down student learning, and sure-fire
evidence that teachers aren’t doing their jobs. But in reality the broader and more diverse a student’s
knowledge background and schema are, the more fluidly they’ll be able to transition across the various
levels of Bloom’s.
Memorization can reduce the cognitive load on a student as they process information, allowing for quick
recall and application rather than breaking that thinking process apart, first finding information, then
evaluating its credibility, and only then moving on to the cognitive main course. In short, the more
“immediate access” a student has to information, the more naturally they can not only apply that
information at higher-levels of thinking, but also can initiate these kinds of actions on their own, making
their own connections, identifying their own misunderstandings, and more fluidly transferring
understanding to new and unfamiliar situations on their own.
2. Use Asynchronous Collaboration
As the highest level of Bloom’s revised taxonomy, “Create” requires students to use innovative–or at
least inventive–thinking.
While many classrooms force awkward collaboration on students, even with the best of intentions and
skilled use of pre-assessment data, this kind of collaboration can stifle student curiosity and individual
talents while placing a premium on socialization, procedural knowledge, and assignment compliance.
While this may be “real world,” it could be that there are some parts of that world better left to the
lifetime they’ll spend as adults. If we can do better in our design of learning experiences we should, and
this means giving every student room to breath cognitively and creatively.
One approach here is to use digital technology and social media to enable asynchronous collaboration
using apps, social media, or digital communities. Here, students can access different strands of a given
assignment at their own pace, adding their own thinking, and being able to observe, sit back, internalize,
and then offer strategic input according to their own readiness, background knowledge, and relative
expertise.
Note that this can be especially effective for teaching introverts, especially creative introverts that may
not be able to advocate for themselves in the pressure of a large group at the social dynamics it
represents.
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3. Allow Students To BYOM
Like BYOD, allowing students to Bring Your Own Media can support learning by allowing students to use
what “their own stuff.”
Among other effects, this can make cognitively challenging work at the upper levels of Bloom’s seem
more accessible. One example? Compare and contrast Shakespeare’s use of thematic development
across 3 sonnets, or do the same for two songs by Lupe Fiasco and one sonnet by Shakespeare. If
nothing else, BYOM allows students to start any learning experience on somewhat solid ground.
Further, as a classroom this should collectively yield a diverging collection of media, which can be
celebrated in classroom showcases, and community-driven and place-based education, with diversity
being among the strategies Silver, Strong, and Perini recommend in Teaching What Matters Most (a
book I highly recommend for any educator).
4. Use Bloom’s Spiraling
Bloom’s Spiraling is the process of starting first at lower levels of Bloom’s–recalling, defining, explaining,
etc.–and then progressively increasing the level of thinking. In that way, Bloom’s Taxonomy becomes a
kind of pathway to guide the learning process itself.
First defining a right triangle, then explaining its characteristics, comparing it to other geometric shapes,
arguing for or against some right triangle-related idea, then finally designing a novel use of the right
triangle in design or architecture, for example. In this process, all students start at the same point–
recognizing and defining–and then move “up” Bloom’s Taxonomy, with the “Create” level helpfully
providing a flexible ceiling that can stretch to meet the needs of even the most advanced understanding
while still acting as a goal for students that might struggle.
And more broadly, Bloom’s Spiraling can be used to frame a lesson, assessment, or even a project-based
learning unit.
Conclusion
Thinking isn’t any different in 2014 than it was in 1214. Only it is.
Using Bloom’s Taxonomy in the 21st century is more complicated than the above strategies honor. The
idea here is to somewhat model how we can adjust the design of learning experiences in response to
changes in the world students use information in. Strategically using every level of Bloom’s Taxonomy–
even memorization, using asynchronous collaboration, “BYOM,” and Bloom’s spiraling are all steps in
that direction.
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Using Bloom’s Taxonomy In The 21st Century: 4 Strategies For Teaching
This stands in contrast to the characteristics of the early 21st century, which include persistent
connectivity, dynamic media forms, information-rich (digital and non-digital) environments, and an
emphasis on visibility for pretty much everything.
What does this mean for how you use Bloom’s Taxonomy in your classroom? What kinds of adjustments
should you make–if any–in light of these shifts in the 21st century?
http://www.calstatela.edu/sites/default/files/centers/spedintern/hints11bloomtaxonomy.pdf
California State University Los Angeles
Education Specialist Intern Program Utilizing Bloom's Taxonomy in Your Classroom
Helpful Hints Series #11
from Dr. Barry Ziff
Students can be involved in creating a variety of products to show their
understanding and level of expertise in the content area. A variety of products are
shared below, however, the teacher needs to adapt the products to the skill level and
ability of their students.
Diary graph flip book collection
Survey letter puzzle questionnaire
Models diagram invention TV commercial
Diorama chart game map
Story timeline scrapbook poem
Mobile song speech poster
Puppet show pamphlet painting travelogue
Construct game teach lesson debate sell product
News article TV game show bumper stickers
Timeline crossword puzzle word search
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Other possibilities: Think in terms of utilizing a variety of senses to produce final
products and to instruct students.
Visual Auditory Kinesthetic
Matching games music role-play
Puzzles rhymes pantomime
Overheads/power point read aloud dramatics
Pictures tapes tracing
Flash cards debates dictionary
Sight words documentary essay
Flow charts jingle journal entry
http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/
Background Information
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom with collaborators Max Englehart, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David
Krathwohl published a framework for categorizing educational goals: Taxonomy of Educational
Objectives. Familiarly known as Bloom’s Taxonomy, this framework has been applied by generations of
K-12 teachers and college instructors in their teaching.
The framework elaborated by Bloom and his collaborators consisted of six major categories: Knowledge,
Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. The categories after Knowledge were
presented as “skills and abilities,” with the understanding that knowledge was the necessary
precondition for putting these skills and abilities into practice.
While each category contained subcategories, all lying along a continuum from simple to complex and
concrete to abstract, the taxonomy is popularly remembered according to the six main categories.
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Why Use Bloom’s Taxonomy?
The authors of the revised taxonomy suggest a multi-layered answer to this question, to which the
author of this teaching guide has added some clarifying points:
1.Objectives (learning goals) are important to establish in a pedagogical interchange so that teachers
and students alike understand the purpose of that interchange.
2.Teachers can benefit from using frameworks to organize objectives because
3.Organizing objectives helps to clarify objectives for themselves and for students.
4.Having an organized set of objectives helps teachers to:
•“plan and deliver appropriate instruction”;
•“design valid assessment tasks and strategies”;and
•“ensure that instruction and assessment are aligned with the objectives.”
The Original Taxonomy (1956)
Here are the authors’ brief explanations of these main categories in from the appendix ofTaxonomy of
Educational Objectives (Handbook One, pp. 201-207):
•Knowledge “involves the recall of specifics and universals, the recall of methods and processes, or the
recall of a pattern, structure, or setting.”
•Comprehension “refers to a type of understanding or apprehension such that the individual knows
what is being communicated and can make use of the material or idea being communicated without
necessarily relating it to other material or seeing its fullest implications.”
•Application refers to the “use of abstractions in particular and concrete situations.”
•Analysis represents the “breakdown of a communication into its constituent elements or parts such
that the relative hierarchy of ideas is made clear and/or the relations between ideas expressed are
made explicit.”
•Synthesis involves the “putting together of elements and parts so as to form a whole.”
•Evaluation engenders “judgments about the value of material and methods for given purposes.”
The 1984 edition of Handbook One is available in the CFT Library in Calhoun 116. See itsACORN record
for call number and availability.
While many explanations of Bloom’s Taxonomy and examples of its applications are readily available on
the Internet, this guide to Bloom’s Taxonomy is particularly useful because it contains links to dozens of
other web sites.
Barbara Gross Davis, in the “Asking Questions” chapter of Tools for Teaching, also provides examples of
questions corresponding to the six categories. This chapter is not available in the online version of the
book, but Tools for Teaching is available in the CFT Library. See itsACORN record for call number and
availability.
The Revised Taxonomy (2001)
A group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists and instructional researchers, and testing and
assessment specialists published in 2001 a revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy with the title A Taxonomy for
Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. This title draws attention away from the somewhat static notion of
“educational objectives” (in Bloom’s original title) and points to a more dynamic conception of
classification.
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The authors of the revised taxonomy underscore this dynamism, using verbs and gerunds to label their
categories and subcategories (rather than the nouns of the original taxonomy). These “action words”
describe the cognitive processes by which thinkers encounter and work with knowledge:
•Remember
•Recognizing
•Recalling
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•Understand
•Interpreting
•Exemplifying
•Classifying
•Summarizing
•Inferring
•Comparing
•Explaining
•Apply
•Executing
•Implementing
•Analyze
•Differentiating
•Organizing
•Attributing
•Evaluate
•Checking
•Critiquing
•Create
•Generating
•Planning
•Producing
In the revised taxonomy, knowledge is at the basis of these six cognitive processes, but its authors
created a separate taxonomy of the types of knowledge used in cognition:
•Factual Knowledge
•Knowledge of terminology
•Knowledge of specific details and elements
•Conceptual Knowledge
•Knowledge of classifications and categories
•Knowledge of principles and generalizations
•Knowledge of theories, models, and structures
•Procedural Knowledge
•Knowledge of subject-specific skills and algorithms
•Knowledge of subject-specific techniques and methods
•Knowledge of criteria for determining when to use appropriate procedures
•Metacognitive Knowledge
•Strategic Knowledge
•Knowledge about cognitive tasks, including appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge
•Self-knowledge
An Encyclopedia of Educational Technology guide to the revised version provides a brief summary of the
revised taxonomy and a helpful table of the six cognitive processes and four types of knowledge.
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http://kern.org/kcclc/wp-content/uploads/sites/51/2012/01/LEA_Plan_2010-2013.pdf
Bloom's taxonomy refers to a classification of the different objectives that educators set for students
(learning objectives). It divides educational objectives into three "domains": cognitive, affective, and
psychomotor (sometimes loosely described as "knowing/head", "feeling/heart" and "doing/hands"
respectively). (AE) Department
The Alternative Education Department serves K-12 students enrolled in Juvenile Court and
Community School programs. The combined 2009-2010 CBEDS enrollment was 2,032; however,
over 8,500 students were served annually. Juvenile Court School serves adjudicated, incarcerated or
neglected students from all over the county. A majority of the students are incarcerated in juvenile
hall pending disposition or are committed to residential treatment programs. In 2009-2010, the
average length of stay in court school was two months. Smaller proportions are served in day
centers during their furlough and are case managed on site by probation and mental health
employees. The 2010 growth API for Juvenile Court School cannot be determined due to the fact
that there were only two valid test scores. Due to the transient nature of students in the Juvenile
Court School program, the number of valid test scores has been historically low. The Court School
program is frozen in Year 2 of Program Improvement in 2009-2010. Due to the ranking exemption,
Court School no longer accepts Title One, Part A funds; and therefore, is no longer in Program
Improvement.
Community Schools serve as an educational alternative for students for school districts in the
county; and, as such, there are eleven programs, geographically located, to serve the needs of all
Kern County districts, their students, and their families. Community School students are 1)
probation referred or on parole, 2) expelled, 3) referred by the district with the approval of the
parent, or 4) homeless. The average length of stay for Community School students in 2009-2010
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was four months. Most programs operated by the Alternative Education Department operate yearround
and are open-entry, open-exit which serves to provide continuous educational alternatives to
any student during the year. The department collaborates with many other county agencies such as
mental health, human services and probation to meet the needs of students. All schools are WASC
accredited and provide a standards-based curriculum with an individualized learning plan for every
student. The 2010 growth Annual Performance Index (API) for Community School was 577 which
represented a growth of 108 from the 2009 base. Only 3 percent of the 5,666 students enrolled
during the school year were included in the 2010 growth. Currently, the Community School
program is in Year 5 of Program Improvement. Although we positively impact students every day,
the enrollment trends make it difficult to track and demonstrate meaningful growth over time. This
is clearly a challenge for our programs, administration and staff; however, we continue to work
diligently to meet the unique needs of the students.