Bloom’s Taxonomy has been around for decades and revised to better address instructional practice.
There are six orders for the original Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and application. Many students of mine regarded it as a piece that they need to memorize and prepare for the comprehensive exam. In fact, I found these six orders amazingly matching the processes of how we learn. They provide a good guideline for how we should plan to teach about any topic.
For any learning, we start from a knowledge level. All knowledge is dead and useless unless we can make sense out of it. Thus the second level is understanding or comprehension. After we learned why, we can apply the knowledge or skills for something more exciting and practical. In general, these three levels are considered lower-order learning. In order to heighten the learning performance, we should aim at higher-order thinking tasks to maximize our learning. We can analyze cases and situations using our knowledge foundation. We can also synthesize a situation or case with our creativity. Finally, we will be able to evaluate ourselves through reflective thinking. We will be able to identify our strengths and weaknesses. We will also be able to expand our interests in further pursuing more learning and explorations.
Take learning multiplication tables as an example. We start with the basic multiplication facts. We learn about the meaning of these facts: 2×3=6 means two rows of three pieces will be equivalent to six pieces all together. After we mastered the basic facts of multiplication, we are able to apply the knowledge to solve a simple problem. Say, we are given a jar of pennies. How many pennies do we have? We can quickly stack them up with ten pennies each and count by tens. We will then move to a more complicated setting to solve problems with multiplication skills. We can also be creative to come up with challenges for others. Finally, we would go back to re-evaluate our learning about multiplication. We have good confidence about what else we’d like to try using multiplication skills.
The revised Bloom’s Taxonomy changed the wording and top-order sequences. More elaborate questions and key verbs are used to describe the hierarchy. Here are the orders (from the bottom): 1) Remembering: can the student recall or remember the information? The key verbs include define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce, state; 2) Understanding: can the student explain ideas or concepts? The key verbs include classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase; 3) Applying: can the student use the information in a new way? The key verbs include choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write; 4) Analyzing: can the student distinguish between the different parts? The key verbs include appraise, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test; 5) Evaluating: can the student justify a stand or decision? The key verbs include appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluate; and 6) Creating: can the student create new product or point of view? The key verbs include assemble, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, write. [Source: http://ww2.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm]
From my experiences in teaching and supervising student teachers, I believe the essential teaching and learning should focus on the lower order skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy. Some teachers try to make the learning more challenging and engaging by jumping too soon to work on the higher-order thinking and learning tasks. Their efforts turned out to be a waste of time and energy.
I have seen a lesson on introducing bones and skeletons, taught in a second grade bilingual class. The teacher showed students a skeleton and some pictures of human bones with labels to show the names of the bones. The teacher then quickly moved on to the individual journal task, in which students were asked to write a short story about the people they knew of with a broken bone. The teacher’s reasoning for such kind of lesson planning was to gear toward higher-order thinking and learning. She expected students to be able to tied their personal experiences to the learning. However, the lesson turned out to be a disaster. These bilingual students need to learn more basic information about the bones and skeletons, including names and functions. They can also benefit from stories, discussions, or some forms of modeling before they can come up with a good journal writing piece. They would also need more English support because their language proficiency was low. I believe the lesson would be more effective if the teacher started with the lower order learning activities in the Bloom’s Taxonomy.
