Blooms Taxonomy
Blooms Taxonomy
According to Collins (2014), by using the Taxonomy, teachers have a framework that allows them to scaffold teaching thinking skills in a structured way through the following 5 stages...
1. Specifically Teaching the language and Concepts of Higher-Order Thinking
Teachers should not only teach the language and concepts but also tell students what they are doing and why higher-order thinking skills are necessary for them to problem-solve at school and in life. For example, by using a common language, students can recognise the skill they are exercising and the level of complexity of a question...
- When they see words like ‘define’, ‘recognise’, ‘recall’, ‘identify’, ‘label’, ‘understand’, ‘examine’, or ‘collect’, they know they are being asked to recall facts and demonstrate their knowledge of content.
- When they see words like, ‘apply’, ‘solve’, ‘experiment’, ‘show’, or ‘predict’, they understand they are being asked to demonstrate application.
- When a question begins with ‘appraise’, ‘judge’, ‘criticise’, or ‘decide’, they understand the higher-order thinking skill they are practising is ‘evaluation’.
2. Planning Classroom Questioning and Discussion Time to Tap into Particular Higher-Order Thinking SkillsThe important word here is ‘plan’. Teachers, on the whole, are very good at ‘thinking on their feet’; however, without meticulous planning they are likely to ask recall questions rather than questions that require higher-order thinking. Similarly, discussions can be de-railed if they are not planned with a higher-order thinking learning objective in mind.By carefully planning lessons and discussions, teachers can ensure the proportion is right....
- Ask a colleague to observe a class with a view to recording the percentage of higher-order thinking skills practiced in a lesson;
- Ask students to use the knowledge they have gained in learning the language of thinking to record the teacher's use of higher-order terms;
- Ask students to observe and assess their classmates in planned activities.
Teachers should also encourage students to reflect on their learning so they understand their thinking strengths and weaknesses.
3. Explicitly Teaching Subject Concepts
The research is overwhelmingly in favour of explicit, direct instruction. Students need to understand the critical features that define what higher-order thinking skills they are practising.
In any subject area, students should be aware of the key concepts they must learn. They must be able to identify them and they must practice them. Teachers can help by alerting students when a key concept is being introduced, and identifying the explicit characteristics of the concept. Students need to understand whether the concept is concrete, abstract, verbal, nonverbal, or process.
Thomas and Thorne (2009) suggest a multi-step process for teaching and learning concepts, which includes:
1. name the critical (main) features of the concept2. name some additional features of the concept3. compare the new to the already known4. name some false features of the concept5. give the best examples or prototypes of the concept (what it is)6. give some non-examples or non-prototypes (what the concept isn't)7. identify other similar or connected concepts.4. Providing ScaffoldingScaffolding involves giving students support at the beginning of a lesson and then gradually turning over responsibility to the students to operate on their own. Without this limited temporary support students are unlikely to develop higher-order thinking skills; however too much scaffolding can be as detrimental as not enough.Teachers should provide ‘only enough support so that learners make progress on their own’. Too much or too little support can interfere with the development of higher-order thinking skills. Too little support, and students are left floundering; provide support even though students don’t ask for it, and they get the message they cannot do the task on their own...
Use Scaffolding:
- During initial learning, with a variety of examples to describe the thinking processes involved
- Only when needed, by first checking for understanding and, if necessary, providing additional examples and explanations
- To build on student strengths and accommodate weaknesses.
Provide Structured Representations and Discussions of Thinking Tasks:
- Visually represent and organise problems in concrete examples such as drawings, graphs, hierarchies, or tables
- Demonstrate how to break up a thought problem into convenient steps, using a number of examples and encouraging students to suggest additional examples
- Discuss examples of problems and solutions, explaining the nature of problems in detail and relating the worked-out solutions to the problems. This practice reduces the student’s need for additional teacher assistance.
Provide Opportunities for Practice in Solving Problems
- Provide teacher-directed practice before independent practice, spot-checking progress on practice and providing short responses of less than 30 seconds to any single request for assistance
- Assign frequent, short homework assignments that are logical extensions of classroom work
- Link practice in the content area to complex, real-life situations.
5. Consciously Teach to Encourage Higher-Order ThinkingIn order to foster deep conceptual understanding, consider using the following strategies...
- Teach skills through real-world contexts
- Vary the context in which student use a newly taught skill
Emphasise the building blocks of higher-order thinking;
- Build background knowledge
- Classify things in categories
- Arrange items along dimensions
- Make hypotheses
- Draw inferences
- Analyse things into their components
- Solve problems
- Encourage students to think about the thinking strategies they are using
We must remember a concept before we can understand it.We must understand a concept before we can apply it.We must be able to apply a concept before we analyse it.We must have analysed a concept before we can evaluate it.We must have remembered, understood, applied, analysed, and evaluated a concept before we can create.
(Loose, 2021)
- learn to listen to, read, view, speak, write, create and reflect on increasingly complex and sophisticated spoken, written and multimodal texts across a growing range of contexts with accuracy, fluency and purpose
- appreciate, enjoy and use the English language in all its variations and develop a sense of its richness and power to evoke feelings, convey information, form ideas, facilitate interaction with others, entertain, persuade and argue
- understand how Standard Australian English works in its spoken and written forms and in combination with non-linguistic forms of communication to create meaning
- develop interest and skills in inquiring into the aesthetic aspects of texts, and develop an informed appreciation of literature.
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