Lesson Planning with Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a tool that you can use to help determine the levels of thinking you’re asking students to do, from simply remembering to understanding to applying and creating. This can give you insight into how to assess student learning and how to push students in higher-order thinking. Building upon each level in your lesson plans will guide students to think in increasingly more sophisticated ways.

I’ve used Bloom’s Taxonomy for years and have always found it helpful, but when I went looking for resources to share with my students I was surprised at how many videos and articles implied that teachers should include every level of Bloom’s Taxonomy in all of their lesson plans.

NOT TRUE!

How should you use Bloom’s Taxonomy in lesson planning?

One way is to think about the learning objectives for your lesson. What are you asking students to do, and what do you want them to be able to do at the end of the lesson? It can be helpful to see how your learning objectives align with Bloom’s Taxonomy by looking at the planning verbs below, NOT to make sure you’re hitting every level (not every skill needs to be taught and assessed at every level), but to help make you aware of what level of the taxonomy your lesson is hitting.

For example, if you are always asking students to identify and define key terms, you might want to think about ways to help them learn to apply those terms. Students may be able to define the parts of speech, but are they then able to use them in a sentence? Students may be able to identify examples of characterization and setting in a piece of literature, but are they able to create their own characters and describe the setting in their stories?

I’ve included a table of helpful planning verbs below. You can also download a free planning table HERE.