What is Blooms Taxonomy?

What is Bloom's taxonomy and how can a teacherThere are many ways in which teachers can use
apply Bloom's taxonomy to classroom lesson plans?blooms taxonomy to help create more focused
Bloom's taxonomy was originally created Benjaminlesson plans and help students use higher order
Bloom for categorizing and classifying levels ofthinking skills. By following the Bloom's taxonomy
intellectual learning that commonly occur in thechart teachers can pinpoint what they will teach and
classroom setting. Bloom's taxonomy contains threehow they will go about teaching it. For example, take
overlapping domains: the cognitive, psychomotor, anda social studies lesson plan on the use of the atomic
affective. Within the cognitive domain Benjaminbomb to end WWII. A teacher could teach this
Bloom identified six levels that have becomelesson by having students read and memorize
commonly known as Blooms Taxonomy.important key terms and facts. However, even if the
The six levels of Bloom's taxonomy, from lowest toteacher uses a variety of teaching strategies to help
highest, are: knowledge, comprehension, application,increase reading comprehension, the problem is the
analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These differentteacher is only focusing on the lower order thinking
levels of Bloom's taxonomy have become anskills. The students may be able to regurgitate the
extremely useful guide for teachers in planninginformation back on the test, but the student is not
classroom lesson plans and classroom objectives. Youusing the higher order thinking skills that will help that
can even find a list of verbs to help teachers designstudent retain the information for the long-term and,
lesson plans in the Bloom's Taxonomy Verb Chartmore importantly, help the student learn to think for
located on this web site:himself.
It is vitally important that teachers do not just teachA simply way to teach the same lesson, but also
lower order thinking skills at the bottom of Bloom'saddress the higher order thinking skills is to simply
taxonomy such as knowledge and comprehension,have the students write a paragraph "evaluating
but also teach higher order thinking skills at the topjudging" Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb.
of Bloom's taxonomy such as evaluation. WhenThe teacher can still have the students include the
students are evaluating and judging and using thekey terms from the lesson in the paragraph, but by
higher order thinking skills they are more likely tohaving the students also make an argument and
retain information, perform better on standardizedsupport that argument the students are also
tests, and most importantly, achieve the ultimate goaladdressing the higher order thinking skills of Bloom's
of becoming lifelong learners.taxonomy.