What is Bloom’s Taxonomy: A Complete Guide?

A teacher’s job is challenging for many reasons because they need to ensure the progress of all students while delivering high-quality education. Textbook-oriented teaching and outdated examination approaches contribute little to nothing to learning outcomes.

Hence, teachers require an instructional framework, such as Bloom’s taxonomy, to help them measure all students' progress. Additionally, it allows them to establish a comprehensive system to streamline their teaching activities accordingly.

What is Bloom’s Taxonomy?

Bloom’s taxonomy is a well-known educational framework that has been designed for teachers to specify learning goals and objectives. It works as a guiding source, which helps them plan, develop, and implement instructional activities.

It consists of a hierarchy, or pyramid, of learning levels, starting from the lowest and going up to the highest. For instance, the taxonomy’s lower levels include understanding and remembering, which form the basis for higher cognitive skills.

Consequently, as the learners progress up the hierarchy, they improve their knowledge and understanding capabilities. Furthermore, Benjamin Bloom, an American educator and psychologist, developed the framework.

He collaborated with a few of his colleagues, Max Englebert, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David Krathwol, in 1956 and published the framework. The original framework contained six levels of learning: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

However, the framework underwent a major transformation decades later, in 2001, when a group of curriculum researchers revised it.

Ways to Integrate Bloom’s Taxonomy in the Classroom

1. Check the Student’s Knowledge.

Before starting a lesson or explaining a new topic, it will be helpful for teachers to check whether students have any prior knowledge about it. Simultaneously, it is also a useful technique to test their memory skills.

Hence, teachers can employ certain activities to assess whether they can recall relevant information and facts. Also, they can utilize the following methods to bolster their memory skills, as it helps them retain information for longer.

• Create flashcards. It helps to write important bits of information on these cards, which students can glance at from time to time.
• Mnemonic devices: These are the most effective memorization techniques that improve long-term memory. Some of the best mnemonic device examples include using songs, rhymes, and acronyms.
• Impromptu quizzes and MCQs: Teachers can also use a pedagogy that has impromptu quizzes and MCQs to assess learners’ knowledge.

Teachers can implement these activities as well as encourage students to use them to self-evaluate. Furthermore, while implementing such activities, they can include action verbs: define, describe, identify, label, list, match, name, outline, quote, recall, report, reproduce, retrieve, show, state, tabulate, etc.

2. Assess the Understanding Level

With so many students in the class, it is difficult to ascertain who has grasped what the teacher has taught in the class. On top of that, students are often hesitant to express their doubts and uncertainties.

That is when teachers can employ the ‘’understanding’’ level, which is the second level of Bloom’s taxonomy. It plays a crucial role in identifying whether or not students have understood the concepts and topics.

Hence, teachers can assign tasks and assignments that will encourage students to understand, synthesize, and interpret information. Therefore, incorporating activities that will help summarize the topics and explain them is necessary. For instance, group discussion is an effective activity that teachers can conduct with the following suggestions:

• Interpret the outcomes of technological overdependency.
• Give examples of the long-lasting impacts of war on the people.

Students can participate in interactive activities as well as write essays to express their individualistic understanding of given topics.

3. Knowledge Application

What is the use of learning if students don’t apply the knowledge? Are students ever able to apply what they learn in school or higher education? These questions are relevant, especially because they point towards the learning and knowledge application gaps.

But why? The reason lies behind an ineffective educational system that focuses more on syllabus completion than assessing student learning. Besides, successful learning occurs only when students can use it in practical scenarios.

Hence, teachers can implement various experiential learning activities wherein they strive to use their acquired knowledge to solve a problem. For example, project-based learning, experiments, and case studies allow students to work on real-life issues.

Similarly, lab experiments are perfect opportunities for them to apply scientific knowledge and draw valid conclusions.

4. Analyzing Facts from Fiction

Students must learn the ability to form their own opinions instead of following what most accept as the ultimate truth. Furthermore, they must learn to identify facts from fiction and arrive at a conclusion based on research.

That is why the analysis level is one of the most critical stages of the taxonomy that teachers can employ by improving students’ learning habits. For instance, they can facilitate the following activities, such as:

• Encourage students to create mind maps.
• Draw conclusions between the past and present discoveries in the same fields.
• Identifying connections between differing elements

Teachers can use action verbs to assign these activities, such as divide, explain, identify, integrate, inventory, order, organize, relate, separate, etc.

5. Evaluate Progress

Waiting for exam results or having one-on-one interactions with the teacher are the only ways students can determine their progress. But what if students can evaluate their own progress? It is imperative for students to track their own learning progress to determine whether they are on the right path or not.

For example, teachers can provide evaluation rubrics, enabling learners to assess their own work and academic achievements. Also, peer review is a common mechanism through which students can evaluate each other's work.

Additionally, students can maintain a journal wherein they can write the lessons that they have completed. They can also write down their doubts and uncertainties, which they can keep track of and ensure have been resolved.

6. Creating Something New

The final and highest level of taxonomy is the ‘’creating’’ level, which relates to creating something new from the acquired knowledge. At this point, students are capable enough to combine different elements to create original work.

Furthermore, teachers must play the role of facilitators, guide students, and provide timely assistance to help them sharpen their thinking abilities. Hence, they can implement several activities that will encourage students to think critically, such as:

• Brainstorming sessions, wherein students will spend time and effort researching a topic.
• Preparing action plans and presentations that reflect creative thinking.
• Working on projects that solve real-world problems.