Create

Create

The resourceful peak of Bloom's Taxonomy is the “Creating” stage.  In this stage of Blooms Taxonomy students are asked to apply the information learned and produce new material. In this section, students are asked to reorganize information learned in the classroom into something new, productive, and creative.  Students will be asked to design, plan, create, develop, compile, write, produce, re-arrange, re-write etc.… 

Examples of higher level tasks which could be asked upon the students include: designing architecture, creating product and designing a marketing campaign, producing a new book cover, making a film, developing a brochure advertisement, creating and performing a song, 

References

Teach Thought. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.teachthought.com/critical-thinking/blooms-taxonomy/249-blooms-taxonomy-verbs-for-critical-thinking/

Wright, S. (2012). Mind/Shift. Retrieved from http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/05/17/flip-this-blooms-taxonomy-should-start-with-creating/

Evaluate

Moving up the hierarchy, we arrive at level 5: “EVALUATE”. 

At this stage, students are now able to make judgments about the value of ideas, items, or materials.  Some important functions that can come into play when students evaluate might involve judging, critiquing, hypothesizing, justifying, proving, or assessing.  Students are able to take the information they have analyzed and form thoughts and ideas around it.  They now are able to justify the “Why?”.

When students reach this level, some sample question starters that teachers might use are:

• Judge the value of…
• Can you defend the character’s position about…?
• Do you think… is a good or bad thing?
• Do you believe…?
• What are the consequences…?
• Why did the character choose…?
• How can you determine the character’s motivation when…?
• What information would you use to support the view…..?

Reference

Shields, T. (2014). 38 QUESTION STARTERS BASED ON BLOOM’S 
TAXONOMY. Retrieved from http://blog.curriculet.com/38-question-starters-based-blooms-taxonomy/

Analyze

Level 4 in Bloom’s Taxonomy…. “ANALYZE”!

Learners who have reached this stage have now progressed from the lower order thinking skills to the higher order thinking skills.  But what does analyze mean? 

According to Bloom’s Taxonomy,

“Analysis refers to the ability to break down material into its component parts so that its organizational structure may be understood. This may include the identification of the parts, analysis of the relationship between parts, and recognition of the organizational principles involved.”

So, in effect, students are now interacting with the content!  Students take what they know and identify important concepts and put them to use.  Up until this stage, students have learned how to summarize information and can answer the basics of who, what, where, and how.  Students will now learn how to break the material down into parts, figure out how it works and classify it.

Looking for a job?  Employers love good analytical skills! 

Check out this link to read more about Analytical Thinking.

Here are some examples of using analytical thinking skills:

·         Analyzing and categorizing data – Study data to determine trends.

·         Handling assignments effectively - Discover a more efficient and productive way to complete a particular job task.
·         Process Improvement – Analyze the process to create a set of steps to streamline that procedure.
·         Math word problems - Distinguish what is relevant or not and then organize the data into a number problem to solve.
·         Dissect a problem – Find a solution.
·         Study material and break it down into categories (compare & contrast, learn to differentiate)

 Many people confuse and often combine this thinking skill with evaluating; but wait, that is the subject of my next post!

References

Analytical Skills Example: What are Analytical Skills and How to Improve Them. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.job-interview-site.com/analytical-skills-example-what-are-analytical-skills-and-how-to-improve-them.html

Bloom's Taxonomy. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.csun.edu/science/ref/reasoning/questions_blooms/blooms.html#Analysis

Teaching Students to Dig Deeper. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/teaching-students-dig-deeper-ben-johnson

Apply

Apply

After remembering/recalling information and understanding/explaining ideas or concepts, the third level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is applying, which involves using the information that you remember and understand from another familiar situation and then executing/carrying out a procedure to a new situation/task or implementing/using this information to an unfamiliar situation/task (Teaching Learning Centre – Indian Institute of Technology Madras, n.d.). 

There are several ways to demonstrate how this knowledge can be “applied”, such as building, collection, interview, model, presentation, role-playing, scrapbook, and simulation (Northern Illinois University – Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center, n.d.).  The technologies that are involved to incorporate applying knowledge are a blog, collaborative learning, and creating a process (Clark, 2015).  Once a learner masters remembering, understanding, and applying knowledge, it enables the learner to move onto the fourth level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

References

Clark, D. (2015). Bloom’s taxonomy of learning domains. Retrieved from  http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
Educational Origami. (n.d.). [Image of words associated with the Apply level of the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy] Bloom’s digital taxonomy. Retrieved from http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

Edwards, A. (Author). (2015, September). Bloom’s taxonomy: Application [Video file].  Available from YouTube website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaA490Oq2Ps
Northern Illinois University – Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center. (n.d.). Bloom’s taxonomy. Retrieved from  http://www.niu.edu/facdev/resources/guide/learning/blooms_taxonomy.pdf

Teaching Learning Centre – Indian Institute of Technology Madras. (n.d.). Revised bloom’s taxonomy. Retrieved from https://tlc.iitm.ac.in/PDF/Blooms%20Tax.pdf

Understand

Next stop in the hierarchy…. “UNDERSTAND”!

In this stage, persons begin to infer or interpret something from the information received.  When learners understand, they are no longer reciting the information; they can now actually explain the information in their own words. 

Previously, the learner could simply recite that 4 x 7 = 28, but now she can explain it!

When learners understand, they can do these functions:

Summarize, Explain, Paraphrase, comprehend

As an instructor, how can you check for understanding?

Start the conversation, get them involved in the topic, try out some of these questions (verbally, on paper, in discussion groups) ….

• How is ___________ similar to/different from ___________?
• What are the characteristics/parts of __________?
• In what other way might we show/illustrate ________?
• What is the big idea/key concept in __________?
• How does _________ relate to _________?
• What ideas/details can you add to _________?
• Give an example of ___________.
• What is wrong with __________?
• What might you infer from _________?
• What conclusions might be drawn from ___________?
• What might happen if ____________?
• What criteria might you use to judge/evaluate ____________?
• What evidence supports ______________?
• How might we prove/confirm ____________?
• How might this be viewed from the perspective of ___________?
• What alternatives should be considered?
• What approach/strategy could you use to ___________?
• How else might you say ___________?

Sometimes students actually DEMONSTRATE their understanding!

Check out this ski lesson:

Reference

Assist Beginning Teachers. (n.d.). Retrieved from 

http://assist.educ.msu.edu/ASSIST/classroom/assesses_learning/Sec1_plan_teach/Str2_ongoing_assessment/tool_check_understanding.htm

Remember

At the base of Bloom’s Taxonomy, you will see “REMEMBER”!

This fundamental building block of cognition is where the taxonomy begins.  Before learners can advance up the hierarchy of understanding and applying a concept, they must first remember it.  In this stage, persons learn to remember information such as reciting lists, recognizing information, recalling steps in a process and identify strategies to them retain that information.

Did you ever stop to think that remembering actually makes you happy? Really?  Yes!  Aren’t you happy when you remember where you parked your car in that big parking lot, where you left your keys, a friend’s birthday, someone’s name, how to do that math problem?  When we remember, we are recalling or retrieving previously learned information. 

There are a variety of techniques that can be used to help us remember.  The basic and most simplistic techniques are associating and rehearsing.  In association, we connect the item to remember with a cue.  With rehearsal, we practice that information over and over.  If you are remembering a list, you might say it out loud over and over or write the list many times until you have remembered it.

There are a variety of techniques that learners can engage to help them remember such as:

Mnemonics – a visual way of remembering.  Check out this link for some mnemonic techniques:

Here are a few more mnemonic techniques…

The Loci Method – Associate objects with familiar locations.

The Peg System – Create and memorize a peg list.  Then associate those words with the list of objects you need to memorize.

The Story Method – Create a story around the sequence of items

And here’s another technique found on youtube:

Find a strategy that you want to test out and the next time you are tasked with remembering information, try it out!

Bloom's Taxonomy - An Overview

Introduction to Bloom’s Taxonomy

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom worked in partnership with Max Engelhart, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David Krathwohl to publish Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, which is otherwise referred to as Bloom’s Taxonomy (Armstrong, n.d.).  This framework for categorizing educational goals, which has been applied for numerous decades not only by teachers from kindergarten through 12^th grade but also college/university instructors in their teachings, encompasses six main categories: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluations (Armstrong, n.d.).  However, in 2001, a revision was made to Bloom’s Taxonomy by a collective of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists, instructional researchers, and testing and assessment specialists, which was published as A Taxonomy for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and focused more on the cognitive processes associated with knowledge (Armstrong, n.d.).  There are six major categories with each of them having between two to seven subcategories, which are the following (Armstrong, n.d.):

1.     Remember:  Recognizing and Recalling

2.     Understand:  Interpreting, Exemplifying, Classifying, Summarizing, Inferring, Comparing, and Explaining

3.     Apply:  Executing and Implementing

4.     Analyze:  Differentiating, Organizing, and Attributing

5.     Evaluate:  Checking and Critiquing

6.     Create:  Generating, Planning, and Producing

Below is a graphic of the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, which notes the six major categories and a short description for each category (Armstrong, n.d.).

Reference

Armstrong, P. (n.d.). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Retrieved from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/#2001