May 25 2009
The Best Resources For Helping Teachers Use Bloom’s Taxonomy In The Classroom
Bloom’s Taxonomy is talked about a lot in educational circles. However, if you believe a recent survey of visits to 23,000 U.S. classrooms, the higher-order thinking skills it’s ideally designed to promote doesn’t get much use.
And I can understand why.
It’s easy to get caught-up in the day-to-day work involved in teaching a class or multiple classes, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of doing the “usual stuff” and not “think out of the box.”
I thought it might be useful to share in a “The Best…” list the resources that help me try to use Bloom’s Taxonomy in my classroom.
There may very well be resources out there that do a far better job of explaining the Taxonomy and how to use it. However, a lot of them are caught up in academic jargon or are just not offered in a way that I find particularly usable.
I personally try to use Bloom’s Taxonomy in two ways. One, I have a big wall chart in the front of my classroom with a summary of each level of the Taxonomy and “question starters” for each of them. Since I spend a lot of time helping my students practice reading strategies, and one of them is asking questions, they can take advantage of the accessibility of this poster. After reviewing what the whole thing means, we discuss how — by practicing asking themselves the higher-level questions while they read a text — they can gain a deeper understand of its meaning.
In addition, I try to use Bloom’s to help me formulate my own lessons. In order to do that, I just need simple, accessible, and practical reminders that I can use. That’s what you’ll primarily find on this list.
Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Helping Teachers Use Bloom’s Taxonomy In The Classroom (most, though not all, are materials prepared by different school districts):
Here’s a Bloom’s Taxonomy chart that’s organized very simply, and that I can keep on my desk or with my papers to help me remember the levels, questions, and practical activities that could go with them.
Here’s another simple list that contains the questions but, more importantly, good ideas on how to implement them in the classroom.
This short article has an even smaller Verb Chart that can serve as a reminder when planning lessons.
I really like this site because of its list of “potential activities and products” for each level.
This site has good practical suggestions on how to apply Bloom’s to reading.
A blog called ESL School ran a series of posts last year on applying Bloom’s specifically to English Language Learners. Here are individual links to each of their posts:
More On Analyzing and Evaluating
Educational Origami has a wiki that is THE place to get ideas on how to relate technology to Bloom’s.
Here’s an interesting Bloom’s Activity Analysis Tool.
The New Jersey World Languages Curriculum Framework is a PDF document with a lot of interesting stuff. The most interesting item in it — by far — is a Bloom’s Taxonomy framework for language learners. It’s Figure 47. It lays-out teaching and learning strategies — specifically for language learners — for each level of the taxonomy.
Harry Tuttle has come-up with an intriguing way to evaluate student projects using Web 2.0 application. I’d encourage you to read his post (and the comments section where he answers a question I left for him). He basically assigns each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy a number — the higher the level, the higher the number. He identifies the level the student achieved in his/her project, and then multiplies it by the number of days they worked on it. It seems to me that this could be a useful formula.
The Differentiator is a cool online application designed to use Bloom’s Taxonomy and other similar thinking/planning “charts” to come-up with appropriate high-level student assignments (I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of any better way to describe it). Though I’m not that sure if it brings much more value than other sites on this list, it still belongs here just because it’s a cool-looking tool. Check it out and you’ll understand what I mean.
Developing Questions For Critical Thinking is an interactive site using a revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy that was developing in the 1990’s. It seems like it has some very useful resources.
There are two very nice tutorials on Bloom’s Taxonomy on this site. They were created using FLASH.
A Three Story Intellect! is a nice lesson plan teaching Bloom’s Taxonomy. It’s a PDF file.
Here’s a nice reproducible Bloom’s Wheel.
Feedback is always welcome.
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5 responses so far
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I’d like to see you describe the lessons you do, as I think that would help “paint pcitures” for all of us. I’m thinking about this a lot in my blog, too, and am in the process of describing several lessons now. (Reflections of the TZST Teacher @http://tzstchr.edublogs.org) You also might want to join the conversation at http://bloomsrubrics.wikispaces.com/ and add this link. Thanks for sharing the resources–getting the taxonomy in front of teachers in mindful ways is a great start. Conversations help move us along the continuum of use as well.
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The way to reach students is to understand how they think, and build from there. We have to stress basic principles. See “Teaching and Helping Students Think and Do Better” on amazon.
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Tremendously helpful post. This is something like the pyramids. I know it existed a long time ago, and I forget and rediscover it from time to time. The rediscovery always stimulates a great boost of mental activity.
Thank you.
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Great post. So often we teach/train to a much lower level of learning that is necessary for people to be successful. I teach trainers for the corporate environment and emphasize that we need to teach people to do, think and create, rather than learn by rote.
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Hi Larry
great set of what look like really useful resources – have added as a ‘cloud’ in our social networking site for sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas – http://cloudworks.ac.uk/index.php/cloud/view/2330.html
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