Higher Order Skills in Early Years – How Useful is Bloom’s

Taxonomy13th February 2013

Yvonne McBlain

yvonne.mcblain@falkirk.gov.uk

01324 501985

Learning Intentions:

We are:

• Exploring how useful Bloom’s taxonomy is/can be

• Developing our ability to plan for higher order skills

Success Criteria?

Participants will be able to:

1.Describe the cognitive skills listed in Bloom’s taxonomy

2.Identify how their existing practice makes use of these skills

3.Assess how Bloom’s or other taxonomies might influence the quality of their planning for Higher Order Skills

Format :

1.Group formation & review activity

2.Video & other support available

3.Presentation & exemplification

4.Bloom’s matching activities

5.Study of other taxonomies

6.Present group responses to the question

“How useful is Bloom’s taxonomy?”

Group Formation Tasks

• Use jigsaw to find your group – meet & greet

• Table mat exercise – what do you know about Bloom’s taxonomy? 5 mins

• Feedback - display and discuss briefly

Bloom’s Taxonomy 1956

Bloom’s Taxonomy • Classification of cognitive skills

• 1956 booklet – has become one of most influential publications for a wide range of educators

• Defines a hierarchy of skills – more complex as they move up the triangle

• Uses triangle to show how “higher” levels include (subsume) those lower down

• http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy

Anderson and Krathwohl 2001

• Revision of Bloom’s

• More relevant for planning, delivery and assessment

• Breaks Bloom’s categories down into a wider range of verbs

Cognitive Skills Re-defined• Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge

from long-term memory. • Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic

messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.

• Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure through executing, or implementing.

• Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing, and attributing.

• Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.

• Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing.

• (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, pp. 67-68)

Bloom’s matching activities

• Work with your group to match each activity with its skill 5 mins

• Tour groups

• Any comments? What did you notice?

Kier Bloomer on HOS• Video Clip

Study of other taxonomies• Skills Path

• HOS Excellence Group• SOLO http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/solo.htm

• Other?

• What do you think?

• Further Reading: SQA paper http://www.sqa.org.uk/files_ccc/

ResearchReport10_Taxonomies.pdf

Let’s Build a Bloom’s

What’s the verdict?

• How useful is Bloom’s taxonomy to you?

• How will this session affect what you do?

• Immediate next steps?