Blooms Taxonomy
Blooms Taxonomy
Blooms Taxonomy
In recent years, as educators have become increasingly focused on the accurate assessment
of student learning, the original taxonomy has been revisited and revised. Unlike the
original, the revised framework is two-dimensional. In the newer model, the two dimensions
are cognitive process and knowledge. These two components operate like an X and Y axis:
the cognitive level (evident from a verb that represents student learning) would be placed on
the horizontal axis, and the type of knowledge (evident from the nouns that represent what
the student is to learn) would be placed on the vertical.
The six cognitive processes in the revised taxonomy are remember, understand, apply, analyze,
evaluate, and create. These are just slightly different from the original six levels of Bloom’s
Taxonomy (Bloom, et al., 1956). The four categories of knowledge in the revised taxonomy are
factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive.
This revised taxonomy works well with the “unwrapping” process and later, in designing
effective assessment items. In order to place an objective in the taxonomy, teachers must
f irst “unwrap” a standard to discover what it requires cognitively (the verb) and knowledge-
wise (the nouns that delineate content and concepts). Once they have determined the
correct placement, then the “bare bones” of the assessment items are set. However, the
placement is important, because different types of objectives require different approaches
to assessment (Anderson, et al., p. 8).
The list on the following pages contains lists of verbs that approximate the particular levels of
student learning. It is important to “unwrap” standards and ensure each standard is placed in
the taxonomy table before designing appropriate assessment items.
166 Copyright © 2008 The Leadership and Learning Center. All rights reserved.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Verbs associated with this level: categorize, clarify, classify, compare, conclude, construct,
contrast, demonstrate, distinguish, explain, illustrate, interpret, match, paraphrase,
predict, represent, reorganize, summarize, translate, understand
Verbs associated with this level: apply, carry out, construct, develop, display, execute,
illustrate, implement, model, solve, use
Verbs associated with this level: analyze, ascertain, attribute, connect, deconstruct,
determine, differentiate, discriminate, dissect, distinguish, divide, examine,
experiment, focus, infer, inspect, integrate, investigate, organize, outline, reduce,
solve (a problem), test for
Copyright © 2008 The Leadership and Learning Center. All rights reserved. 167
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Verbs associated with this level: appraise, assess, award, check, conclude, convince,
coordinate, criticize, critique, defend, detect, discriminate, evaluate, judge, justify,
monitor, prioritize, rank, recommend, support, test, value
Verbs associated with this level: adapt, build, compose, construct, create, design,
develop, elaborate, extend, formulate, generate, hypothesize, invent, make, modify,
plan, produce, originate, refine, transform
Works Cited
Anderson, L. W., et al. (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision
of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longman.
Bloom, B. S., et al. (1956). The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook I, Cognitive
Domain. New York: David McKay.
168 Copyright © 2008 The Leadership and Learning Center. All rights reserved.
Designing Effective Projects: Thinking Skills Frameworks
Bloom’s Taxonomy: A New Look at an Old Standby
Today’s world is a different place, however, than the one Bloom’s Taxonomy reflected in 1956.
Educators have learned a great deal more about how students learn and teachers teach and now
recognize that teaching and learning encompasses more than just thinking. It also involves the
feelings and beliefs of students and teachers as well as the social and cultural environment of the
classroom.
Several cognitive psychologists have worked to make the basic concept of a taxonomy of thinking
skills more relevant and accurate. In developing his own taxonomy of educational objectives,
Marzano (2000) points out one criticism of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The very structure of the
Taxonomy, moving from the simplest level of knowledge to the most difficult level of evaluation, is
not supported by research. A hierarchical taxonomy implies that each higher skill is composed of
the skills beneath it; comprehension requires knowledge; application requires comprehension and
knowledge, and so on. This, according to Marzano, is simply not true of the cognitive processes
in Bloom’s Taxonomy.
The originators of the original six thinking processes assumed that complex projects could be
labeled as requiring one of the processes more than the others. A task was primarily an “analysis”
or an “evaluation” task. This has been proven not to be true which may account for the difficulty
that educators have classifying challenging learning activities using the Taxonomy. Anderson
(2000) argues that nearly all complex learning activities require the use of several different
cognitive skills.
Like any theoretical model, Bloom’s Taxonomy has its strengths and weaknesses. Its greatest
strength is that it has taken the very important topic of thinking and placed a structure around it
that is usable by practitioners. Those teachers who keep a list of question prompts relating to the
various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy undoubtedly do a better job of encouraging higher-order
thinking in their students than those who have no such tool. On the other hand, as anyone who
has worked with a group of educators to classify a group of questions and learning activities
according to the Taxonomy can attest, there is little consensus about what seemingly self-evident
terms like “analysis,” or “evaluation” mean. In addition, so many worthwhile activities, such as
authentic problems and projects, cannot be mapped to the Taxonomy, and trying to do that would
diminish their potential as learning opportunities.
The Knowledge Dimension is the “knowing what.” It has four categories: factual, conceptual,
procedural, and metacognitive. Factual knowledge includes isolated bits of information, such as
vocabulary definitions and knowledge about specific details. Conceptual knowledge consists of
systems of information, such as classifications and categories.
Procedural knowledge includes algorithms, heuristics or rules of thumb, techniques, and methods
as well as knowledge about when to use these procedures. Metacognitive knowledge refers to
knowledge of thinking processes and information about how to manipulate these processes
effectively.
The Cognitive Process Dimension of the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy like the original version has
six skills. They are, from simplest to most complex: remember, understand, apply, analyze,
evaluate, and create.
Remembering
Remembering consists of recognizing and recalling relevant information from long-term memory.
Understanding
Understanding is the ability to make your own meaning from educational material such as reading
and teacher explanations. The subskills for this process include interpreting, exemplifying,
classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.
Applying
The third process, applying, refers to using a learned procedure either in a familiar or new
situation.
Analysis
The next process is analysis, which consists of breaking knowledge down into its parts and
thinking about how the parts relate to its overall structure. Students analyze by differentiating,
organizing, and attributing.
Evaluation
Evaluation, which is at the top of the original taxonomy, is the fifth of the six processes in the
revised version. It includes checking and critiquing.
Creating
Creating, a process not included in the earlier taxonomy, is the highest component of the new
version. This skill involves putting things together to make something new. To accomplish
creating tasks, learners generate, plan, and produce.
According to this taxonomy, each level of knowledge can correspond to each level of cognitive
process, so a student can remember factual or procedural knowledge, understand conceptual or
metacognitive knowledge, or analyze metacognitive or factual knowledge. According to Anderson
and his colleagues, “Meaningful learning provides students with the knowledge and cognitive
processes they need for successful problem solving”. The following charts list examples of each
skill of the Cognitive and Knowledge Dimensions.
References
Anderson, L. W. & Krathwohl, D. R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing.
New York: Longman.
Bloom, B.S., (Ed.). 1956. Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational
goals: Handbook I, cognitive domain. New York: Longman.
Costa, A. L. (Ed.). (2000). Developing minds: A resource book for teaching thinking. Alexandria,
VA: ASCD.
SYNTHESIS Putting together Reflects • Discusses act formulate prediction advertisement newspaper
constituent elements Extends • Generalizes arrange generalize prepare poem painting
or parts to form a Analyzes • Relates assemble generate pretend blueprint pantomime
whole requiring Evaluates • Compares blend hypothesize produce cartoon plan
original, creative • Contrasts collect improve propose collage play
thinking. • Abstracts combine infer reorganize design product
• Active Participant compile invent revise event project
Communicating in a compile manage role-play film radio
unique way. Examples: Create a forecast modify set up formula solution
study plan for compose organize show goal song
Developing a plan or completing a term of concoct organize suppose hypercard stack story
proposing a set of study. construct originate systematize invention video
operations. create imagine write machine
Develop a way to teach derive plan media product
the concept of design predict new game
“adjectives”. develop
devise
ANALYSIS Breaking information Probes • Discusses analyze discover organize abstract investigation
down into its Guides • Uncovers appraise discriminate point out category list
constituent elements. Observes • Lists arrange dissect point out chart mobile
Evaluates • Active Participant calculate distinguish probe checklist outline
Uncovering the Acts as a categorize examine question conclusion plan
unique characteristics resource Examples: Inspect a classify experiment relate database questionnaire
of something. Questions house for poor compare group research diagram report
Organizes workmanship. contract inquire scrutinize graph spreadsheet
Dissects contrast inspect separate illustration summary
Simplify “ballet” to its criticize interpret sequence inventory survey
basic moves. debate inventory sift
deduce investigate solve
detect order survey
diagram test
differentiate
Bloom’s Taxonomy Breakdown:
Roles, Process Verbs & Products from Bloom’s Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain
COMPREHENSION Understanding of Demonstrates • Explains account for express paraphrase collection outline
information given. Listens • Translates annotate give recognize debate quiz
Questions • Demonstrates ask give main report definition recitation
Communicating an Compare • Interprets calculate idea research dramatization reproduction
idea or thing in a Contrasts • Active Participant convert identify restate example show & tell
new of different Examines describe identify retell explanation story problems
form. Examples: Explain the discuss interpret review label summary
Qualifying ideas in formula for the area of a examples of locate summarize list test
relation to one’s triangle. expand upon locate tell
own experience. explain observe translate
(interpretation) Explain the levels of outline
Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Recite a poem.
Lowest level of
thinking/learning
Appendix E: Thinking Tool Resources
Appendix B.01
A P P E N D I X B
Facet of
Understanding What Students Do Performance Verbs
Explanation • Provide thorough, supportable, and demonstrate, derive,
justifiable accounts of phenomena, describe, design, exhibit,
facts and data express, induce, instruct,
• Provide sophisticated and apt expla- justify, model, predict,
nations and theories, which provide prove, show, synthesize,
knowledgeable and justified accounts teach
of events, actions, and ideas.
Interpretation • Tell meaningful stories create analogies, critique,
• Offer apt translations document, evaluate,
• Provide a revealing historical or illustrate, judge, make
personal dimension to ideas and sense of, provide
events metaphors, read between
• Create interpretations, narratives, and the lines, represent, tell a
translations that provide meaning story of, translate
Application • Use knowledge effectively in new adapt, build, create, test,
situations and diverse contexts de-bug, decide, design,
exhibit, invent, perform,
produce, propose, solve
Perspective • See and hear points of view through analyze, argue, compare,
critical eyes and ears contrast, criticize, infer
• See the big picture
• Reveal a critical and insightful point
of view
Empathy • Find value in what others might find assume role of, be like, be
odd, alien, or implausible open to, believe, consider,
• Perceive sensitively on the basis of imagine, relate, role-play
prior direct experience
• Able to identify with another
person’s feelings and worldview
Self-Knowledge • Have self-knowledge be aware of, realize,
• Perceive the personal style, recognize, reflect,
prejudices, projections, and habits of self-assess
mind that both shape and impede
one’s own understanding
• Be aware of what is not understood
and why understanding is so hard
• Understand how one’s patterns of
thought and action inform, as well as
prejudice, understanding
Compiled from Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design (1998) and The Understanding by
Design Handbook (1999), ASCD.
Dimensions Of Learning
www.dsea.org/teachingtips/tips/dimensionlearn.html
Appendix B References
Anderson, L., & Krathwohl, D. R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning,
Development.
Curriculum Design.
© 2006 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel is
a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its
subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. I N T E L® T E A C H T O T H E F U T U R E
*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
Quickstart Guide to text analysis with TextSTAT
TextSTAT is a concordance program which was designed to be user friendly and provide simple Internet func-
tionality. Texts can be combined to form corpora (which can also be stored as such). The program analyses
these text corpora and displays word frequency lists, concordances, and keywords in context according to
search terms. With TextSTAT you can search large amounts of text. You learn how often a certain word oc-
curs or in what contexts it is used. Word combinations can also be examined.
You can save the opened files so that you can use them again as a Add a text file from your
corpus at a later stage (via the appropriate button and/or menu en- computer (note that
try). You can decide the name of the file that is then created. We textSTAT cannot work
recommend storing the corpora in a separate folder. with Microsoft Word files.
These files would have to
be saved first as .txt files)
Word Forms Remove a file from your
corpus.
After compiling a corpus from one or several files or after loading an ex-
isting corpus, you can obtain frequency information on the word forms
contained in the corpus by clicking on the 'Word Forms' tab. Click on the
'Frequency list button' to generate a default word frequency list. Note that
this does not convert any of the words to all lowercase, so the same word
may appear twice in the list with the first letter of the word either upper-
case or lowercase
The options menu on the right hand side of the screen allows you to sort
your word list in different ways. To convert all uppercase letters to lower-
case, check off the sort case insensistive checkbox.
Retrograde sorts the words starting with the last letter of each word. You
can also limit the frequency range to be displayed. Here you should take
into account that '0' means no restrictions (therefore: if min.=0 and max.=0,
all word forms will be displayed). After the display options have been
changed, you will have to 'Update list'. If you double-click on a word form,
then it will be searched for in the corpus and a concordance will be created.
Search / Concordance
The Search/Concordance tab shows a word form or a keyword in context. The
terms found can be sorted according to different criteria, and the length of the con-
text to be displayed can be determined. The search term is displayed in upper case
by default. This marking can be deactivated.
When you enter a search string, it will be assumed by default that a word has been
entered. This setting: search for 'whole words only' can be deactivated. A new
search and/or a change in the display options can be activated with the button
'Search/Update'.When searching, you can use regular expressions (see below). If
you double-click on a line of text, this will be searched for in the corpus and the
citation (a text passage with more context) will be displayed.
Citation
The Citation tab will display a text passage in which the sought string will be shown in more context. More-
over, the name of the file from which the passage is taken, will also be displayed. The position (in characters)
of the passage in the original file will be given in brackets.
A double-click on the file name opens the original file with the program that is linked with the file extension.
In the case of websites, you are connected with the Internet and see the original file displayed in the browser.
Regular Expressions
When defining the search term (in 'Search/Concordance'), you can use so-called 'regular expressions'. While
these are not particularly user friendly, they are extremely powerful in executing very precise search queries.
Bloom’s Revised
Taxonomy
• Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives
• 1950s- developed by Benjamin Bloom
• Means of expressing qualitatively different kinds of
thinking
• Been adapted for classroom use as a planning tool
• Continues to be one of the most universally applied
models
• Provides a way to organise thinking skills into six levels,
from the most basic to the more complex levels of thinking
• 1990s- Lorin Anderson (former student of Bloom) revisited
the taxonomy
• As a result, a number of changes were made
(Pohl, 2000, Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn, pp. 7-8)
Original Terms New Terms
• Evaluation •Creating
• Synthesis •Evaluating
• Analysis •Analysing
• Application •Applying
• Comprehension •Understanding
• Knowledge •Remembering
(Based on Pohl, 2000, Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn, p. 8)
Change in Terms
• The names of six major categories were changed from noun to
verb forms.
• As the taxonomy reflects different forms of thinking and thinking
is an active process verbs were used rather than nouns.
• The subcategories of the six major categories were also
replaced by verbs and some subcategories were reorganised.
• The knowledge category was renamed. Knowledge is an
outcome or product of thinking not a form of thinking per se.
Consequently, the word knowledge was inappropriate to
describe a category of thinking and was replaced with the word
remembering instead.
• Comprehension and synthesis were retitled to understanding
and creating respectively, in order to better reflect the nature of
the thinking defined in each category.
http://rite.ed.qut.edu.au/oz-teachernet/training/bloom.html
BLOOM’S REVISED TAXONOMY
Creating
Generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things
Designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing.
Evaluating
Justifying a decision or course of action
Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting, judging
Analysing
Breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships
Comparing, organizing, deconstructing, interrogating, finding
Applying
Using information in another familiar situation
Implementing, carrying out, using, executing
Understanding
Explaining ideas or concepts
Interpreting, summarising, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining
Remembering
Recalling information
Recognizing, listing, describing, retrieving, naming, finding
Level 2 – C2
Categories & Alternative Definition
Cognitive Processes Names
Understand Construct meaning from
instructional messages,
including oral, written, and
graphic communication
Interpreting Clarifying Changing from one form of
Paraphrasing representation to another
Representing
Translating
Exemplifying Illustrating Finding a specific example or
Instantiating illustration of a concept or principle
Classifying Categorizing Determining that something belongs
Subsuming to a category
Summarizing Abstracting Abstracting a general theme or
Generalizing major point(s)
Inferring Concluding Drawing a logical conclusion from
Extrapolating presented information
Interpolating
Predicting
Anderson, Lorin W. & Krathwohl, David R. (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching
and Assessing: a Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy. New York. Longman
Publishing.
Potential Activities and Products
Remembering: Potential
Activities and Products
• Make a list of the main events of the story.
• Make a time line of events.
• Make a facts chart.
• Write a list of any pieces of information
you can remember.
• What animals were in the story?
• Make a chart showing…
• Make an acrostic.
• Recite a poem.
Understanding: Potential
•
Activities and Products
Cut out, or draw pictures to show a particular event.
• Illustrate what you think the main idea may have been.
• Make a cartoon strip showing the sequence of events.
• Write and perform a play based on the story.
• Retell the story in your own words.
• Write a summary report of the event
• Prepare a flow chart to illustrate the sequence of events.
• Make a coloring book.
• Cut out, or draw pictures to show a particular event. Illustrate what you think the main
idea was.
• Make a cartoon strip showing the sequence of events.
• Write and perform a play based on the story.
• Retell the story in your own words.
• Write a summary report of the event
• Prepare a flow chart to illustrate the sequence of events.
• Cut out, or draw pictures to show a particular event. Illustrate what you think the main
idea was.
• Make a cartoon strip showing the sequence of events.
• Write and perform a play based on the story.
Utilizing TextSTAT………………………………………………………... 1
Beginning with the corpus…………………………………………………. 1
Creating a new corpus……………………………………………………… 1
Opening an existing corpus………………………………………………… 2
Adding local files to a corpus……………………………………………… 2
Adding internet files to a corpus…………………………………………… 2
The corpus screen………………………………………………………….. 3
Accessing the corpus……………………………………………………….. 3
Word forms………………………………………………………………… 3
Frequency list………………………………………………………………. 4
Sorting (alphabetically, by frequency, retrograde, by case)……………….. 4
Searching for affixes……………………………………………………….. 4
Viewing concordance lines……………………………………………….... 4
Searching concordance lines……………………………………………….. 4
Query editor ……………………………………………………………….. 6
Manipulating concordance lines …………………………………………... 7
Citation …………………………………………………………………….. 7
Viewing extended text …………………………………………………….. 7
Notes ………………………………………………………………………. 7
When you open TextSTAT, this screen will appear.
The tool bar along the top of the screen will allow you to utilize the program.
A. To create a new corpus, select the New Corpus button (first from the left). This will open a
window allowing you to name and save a new corpus. You must name the corpus before you can add
files. Once you name your corpus, a box will appear letting you know you may add files. See steps
C and D for adding files.
1
B. To open an existing corpus, select the Open Corpus button (second from the left). This will allow
you to select from your saved corpora to open the corpus of your choice.
C. To add local files from your computer to a new or existing corpus, select the Add Local Files
button (seventh from the left). This will allow you to search your computer to add a .doc file or a .txt
file.
D. To add internet files to a new or existing corpus, select the Add File From Web button (sixth from
the left). This will open the Web Spider in order for you to paste in a web address(es).
2
Once the corpus in complete, the corpus screen may look something like this (displaying each file
in the corpus):
A. Word Forms
To get a word list for the corpus, select the Show Word Frequencies button (third from the right).
This will open the Word forms screen and display a word list sorted by frequency.
3
To manipulate the word list, use the options on the right side of the Word forms screen.
1. Sort the word list according to frequency, alphabetically, or retrograde (alphabetically backwards).
2. Establish a minimum and maximum number of times a word should appear in the corpus in order
to show up on the word list.
3. Sort case insensitive so that a word that begins with a capital letter, sentence initial, for example,
will be counted with the same word that begins with a lowercase letter.
4. Search for affixes using the search box.
B. Concordance
You may view concordance lines from the corpus via two options:
1. Double click on a word from the word list. This will open the Concordance screen and show all
lines from the corpus that contain the selected word, as well as 40 characters on each side of the
word.
4
b. To search for a frame (a phrase with a wild card; for example in the xxxx of) in the corpus, select
the Query Editor button.
5
Enter the frame, in the in the first search term box and of in the second search term box; then, select 1
word minimum and maximum between the search terms.
For both options a and b, concordance lines will appear on the screen:
6
To manipulate the concordance lines, use the options on the right side of the screen.
1. The concordance lines may be sorted to the left, i.e. words before the search word/phrase are
alphabetized.
2. The concordance lines may be sorted to the right, i.e. words after the search word/phrase are
alphabetized.
3. For concordance lines which contain a frame, lines may be sorted alphabetically according to the
wildcard.
4. Sort case insensitive so that a word/phrase that begins with a capital letter will be counted with
the same word that begins with a lowercase letter.
All of the above options are available on the right hand side of the Concordance screen.
C. Citation
To see extended text from a word, phrase, or concordance line in the corpus, use the Citation screen. The
Citation screen may be accessed by double clicking on a concordance line. This will open the Citation
screen to show
1. in blue, a link that contains the original document from which the concordance line came;
2. in red, the original concordance line;
3. in black, 50-75 words on either side of the original concordance line.
NOTES: The Word forms and Concordance options will only function when a corpus has been opened.
The Citation option will only function when concordance lines have been selected.
7