What is Bloom’s Taxonomy?
- Learning objectives is an important responsibility of teachers
- Learning
objectives-specific statements of what students should know be able to do and
understand at the end of a lesson
- They describe outcomes NOT activities
- Written in a specific and purposeful way
- SMART
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant and result-oriented
- Time-bound
- Should be specific-description of what should be learned
- Use ‘bloom’ words to
create learning objectives
- Make sure you use specific words that are effective (action verbs)



More Notes
- Created in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom (educational Psychologist)
- Multi-tiered model of
classifying thinking according to six
cognitive domains are used to create learning objectives
- Remembering-retrieving, recognizing and recalling knowledge (ex. define, identify, label, list)
- Understanding-construct information from oral, written and graphic messages (ex. compare, discuss, explain, summarize)
- Applying-involves carrying out or using a procedure through executing or implementing (ex. calculate, compute, manipulate, solve)
- Analyzing-deals with breaking material into constituent parts or relate to one another (ex. distinguish, analyze, differentiate, investigate)
- Evaluating-has the learner making judgements based on criteria and standards (ex. argue, concluded, critique, test)
- Creating-or putting elements together to form a functional whole (ex. construct, design, invent, produce)
- It begins with lower order thinking skills and they need prerequisite knowledge before moving up a level
- Lower level is usually in the remembering/understanding stage where higher level is usually in the evaluating/creating stage (but all courses should have a variety in each stage)
- How to write a learning
objective?
- Step 1-start with the stem sentence (After this module, you will be able to:)
- Step 2-determine the learning outcome
- Step 3-consult the Bloom’s Wheel to select the appropriate level and verb
- Step 4-write the verb and learning outcome into a statement that, when combined with the stem, forms a complete sentence (Classify learning objectives within the six cognitive domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy)
- Learning objectives are measurable, observable statements of what students will be able to do at the end of a unit of learning
- Bloom’s taxonomy is a
powerful tool to help develop learning objectives because it explains the
process of learning:
- Before you can understand a concept, you must remember it.
- To apply a concept you must first understand it.
- In order to evaluate a process, you must have analyzed it.
- To create an accurate conclusion, you must have completed a thorough evaluation.
- DO NOT use verbs like (understand, know, appreciate, become familiar with, learn or be aware of) because they are too vague

(the 6 cognitive domains)


