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What Is Bloom's Taxonomy?

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In the publication by Gettinger and Lyon (1985) the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy was considered. They reported that within schools the most common activities and tasks that occurred were those that required recall of knowledge, comprehension and application. Tienken, C.H. et al (2010) reported similar findings, in that the types of questions asked by teachers in their study were what they termed reproductive; those questions that required recall, comprehension and application, the lower orders of Bloom’s taxonomy. When I read the findings of the above papers, I wondered whether it was true that questions to promote higher order thinking skills, are lacking. After reading the work of Marimuthu, Michael, Muthusamy, & Veeravagu, (2010) it became apparent …show more content…

Ayvaci & Turkdogan (2010) noted that there must be an alignment between the expectation of success from children and the questions that teachers ask, as explained earlier, this is one of the concepts of AfL explained by Black and Wiliam; sharing of learning outcomes. In order to reach the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy children should be given the opportunity to learn via questions posed by the teacher. Ayvaci & Turkdogan explained that teachers more often than not failed to assess the higher order thinking skills of children. They went on to say that in order to improve higher order thinking skills, teachers should employ suitable teaching and assessment methods and techniques. AfL is critical to this notion. Eber & Parker, (2007) said it does not make sense to assess children on the higher levels of cognition if they haven’t been presented the opportunity to learn them by the questions the teacher poses, therefore careful planning and delivery of questions using Bloom’s revised hierarchy of thinking within lessons are of the upmost importance. By carefully considering questions, teacher’s can evaluate their formative assessment …show more content…

By using open-ended questioning, children are being asked to evoke their imagination and think hard about the answer. Open-ended questioning also encourages children to form their own opinion. Teachers that use open-ended questions are giving children the confidence to think for themselves, offer an opinion to the class and develop thinking skills of developing personal opinions. In this form of questioning there is no right or wrong answer. By using this strategy the teacher is developing a confidence within

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