Practice Labeling Levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy

A common misconception of novice learners is that very young children are not a capable of higher levels of thinking. This activity helps to dispel that misconception by focusing on simple tasks around the theme of the alphabet. These tasks would all be at the lower elementary level. 

These directions are for the card sorting activity as a whole class activity. The activity can easily be adjusted for small groups by printing a set of cards and labels for each group. This activity can also be converted to an electronic activity by copying/pasting the tasks and labels into an electronic card sorting activity.

Print the Labels for Blooms and/or the Labels for New Blooms. Cut the labels apart to display on a wall in the classroom.

Print one set of the Alphabet Tasks to Label with Blooms. Cut each task apart so that each task is on an individual strip to randomly distribute to the class.

Each individual will get 1-3 tasks to classify, depending on the size of the class. Partners of 2-3 might collaborate to complete classification of their part of the class set.

After individuals/partners decide upon the appropriate classification of their tasks, they add their strip/task under the appropriate label on the wall.

Extended Engagement

At this point, the activity can be extended by providing students with colored stickers (or sticky notes). Individuals/partners could examine the strips/tasks under each label and add their sticker (or sticky note) to show agree/disagreement with each classification (i.e. yellow for agree and blue for disagree).

The instructor could provide the correct answers and explanations with the Bloom's Activity Answer Key. Rather than just giving the correct answers, the instructor might ask students to compare items in each list and identify similarities or identify any item in the list that seems to be different. Students might be asked to volunteer to explain/justify why tasks are classified in each category (not necessarily justifying/explaining why THEY classified the item but explain/justifying why the task should or should not be in the category). Students might be asked to consider what would make the task lower/higher (i.e. students were told what a set of words have in common and they have to remember and repeat what they were told would take the analyzing tasks down to knowledge).

This activity could be concluded by labeling this activity for Bloom’s Taxonomy. What is the highest level of thinking used for this activity? Justify why this activity would be labeled as such.