"Bloom's Taxonomy:Original and Revised" by:Mary Forehand

Benjamin S. Bloom was a forerunner in the creation of the multi-tiered system that classified people’s thinking behaviors, and patterns of learning. He wrote his first book in 1956 entitled “Bloom’s taxonomy” where he discussed his multi-tiered model of classifying thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity. The lowest three levels are knowledge, comprehension and application. The highest three levels are analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Because the levels are hierarchal, you can master one level of thinking and move on to the next. Often times, teacher’s use this hierarchy with their children by telling them to “move up the ladder” to a higher level of thinking. However, as time has progressed, Bloom’s original names for his thinking levels were renamed. Instead, the three lowest levels are remembering, understanding and applying and the three highest levels are analysis, evaluating and creating. Another change is that many of Bloom’s original levels have been subdivided into three or four different subcategories. For example, For example, Remember is subdivided into the three categories of Remember, Recognizing, and Recalling. Having all the different subcategories has shown to be helpful for teachers in their writing objectives and in aligning their standards with the curriculum. In today’s education, bloom’s taxonomy has proven to also help teachers to measure their students ability, and therefore help them better see where they need to focus on their students education.