Understanding Learning Targets through Bloom’s Taxonomy
Learning targets are essential to student success. They ensure students fully understand learning expectations. When creating these targets, it is important to be both strategic and intentional. We take a very systematic approach to developing learning targets, with the help of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains.
You may be familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains and, in particular, the cognitive domain that consists of mental levels with aligned capability verbs. Other types of cognitive taxonomies have been developed and can be used in the same way we use Bloom’s work. To help teachers create appropriate learning targets at a point in time during the instructional process, we integrated three comments into a chart that follows:
First, we provide the mental level and a definition.
Second, we list some sample verbs.
Third, we offer some probing questions that align to a particular mental level.
Click here to view the chart we made to help you better understand how to align capability verbs and instructional prompts with cognitive levels found in Bloom’s Taxonomy.
The image below provides examples of capability verbs and cognitive levels that are important to consider when creating learning targets.
Asti Kelley, TeacherReady®
Excerpts from: Who’s Engaged? | Feature images: CFT Vanderbilt & USNews
