The chart is based on the work of Dr. Benjamin Bloom, of the University of Chicago, and is known as Bloom’s Taxonomy. His taxonomy arranges the action and thinking levels of instruction into six related groups with each “floor” becoming more difficult as we climb the stairs of the house. (Wong, 1998) Please note that the information below is a template. The major educational use of Bloom’s Taxonomy is to consciously “Push the Roof” and get students to a higher level of mental activity. Mindless exercise at the lower levels of Bloom’s is appropriate for some things but working there continuously is intrinsically not motivational and does very little for higher thinking order. We need to be operating on the upper floors of the house. Not only does operating at the upper levels increase higher order thinking but it gives students association and reason to remember information beyond memorization. The research tells us that it is not necessary to know all the lower level information to operate at the upper levels and the exploration to get to the top creates the learning environment to also learn the bottom concepts. This is a major component of conceptual learning versus procedural.
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