Title: Bloom’s Taxonomy
Author: Julie Kuehl
Published: June 15, 2019
Last modified: August 24, 2023

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# Bloom’s Taxonomy

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You’ll sometimes hear the team refer to “BloomBloom's Taxonomy Bloom’s Taxonomy 
is a way of writing lesson plan objectives using specific words so that the objectives
can be measured. See https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/guidelines/blooms-
taxonomy/ for more details.’s TaxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things
together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post 
format. [https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies](https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies).”
when talking about objectives and assessments for the team’s lesson plans. So what
is that?

> **Bloom’s taxonomy** is a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational
> learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. The three lists
> cover the learning objectives in cognitive, affective and sensory domains. The
> cognitive domain list has been the primary focus of most traditional education
> and is frequently used to structure curriculum learning objectives, assessments
> and activities.
> 
> The models were named after [Benjamin Bloom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Bloom),
> who chaired the committee of educators that devised the taxonomy.
>  Wikipedia.org [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy)–
> accessed on 15 June 2019

That’s a bit more in-depth than the team gets with Bloom’s Taxonomy though. We use
it to help write objectives in a way that can actually be measured. For instance,
an objective of “Upon completion of this lesson the participant will understand 
how to …” – how do you measure “understand”? So rather than use words like “understand”
or “know” we require words like “identify” (as in a multiple choice question) or“
use” (as in do an exercise successfully).

So here’s a few words (verbs) that we like to begin each lesson plan’s objective
with:

 * Identify
 * Explain
 * Create
 * Demonstrate
 * Use
 * Recognize
 * Define
 * Choose
 * Modify
 * Write
 * Solve
 * Summarize
 * Locate
 * List

This example of Bloom’s taxonomy is a good reference because it helps to better 
make the leap from “understand” to actionable “doing”:

![](https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-wp0/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2019/03/27124326/
Blooms-Taxonomy-650x366.jpg)

First published

June 15, 2019

Last updated

August 24, 2023

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