Benjamin Bloom (1956) devised a taxonomy that discriminated between levels of cognitive thinking. Although the original intention of the taxonomy was to facilitate communication between educators and psychologists in the area of test construction, research and curriculum development, it has been found that areas of study and classroom activities can be based on the taxonomy.
Bloom's Taxonomy consists of six levels:
Students should be encouraged to move from lower-to-higher level thinking through the use of teacher questioning, discussion and appropriate tasks.
Although students need to be exposed to experiences at all levels of the Taxonomy, opportunities to work at more advanced levels are vital for gifted students. Often their advanced knowledge and comprehension skills enable them to progress more rapidly to higher levels of thinking, such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
Taxonomy of the cognitive domain activities
Ideas in this section can be modified or adjusted to suit the age level, learning area, group or class and the learning needs of the students.
Bloom online
This link provides a collection of Bloom based web sites for use in your classrooms. EdSelect © is a collection of web sites chosen for classroom use by teachers and their students. Although the focus of site selection is the Ontario, Canada curricula, many teachers and students throughout the global network will find the links useful for their studies.
The Revised Bloom's Taxonomy
During the 1990's, Lorin Anderson (a former student of Benjamin Bloom) led a team of cognitive psychologists in revisiting the taxonomy with the view to examining the relevance of the taxonomy as we enter the twenty-first century.