Bloom's Taxonomy: summary and use

Get to grips with Bloom's Taxonomy, and see examples from schools on how to apply the principles in lesson planning and teaching.

Last reviewed on 1 April 2022
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Contents
  1. What is Bloom's Taxonomy?
  2. Applying Bloom's Taxonomy to lesson planning
  3. Teaching critical thinking using Bloom's

What is Bloom's Taxonomy?

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a cognitive model explaining the levels of thinking seen as important to the process of learning. It was developed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom and a team of educators. 

In 2001, a number of changes were made to Bloom’s original taxonomy. This updated version is often referred to as the 'revised taxonomy'. The revised taxonomy ranges from lower-level thinking abilities to higher-order thinking abilities, and has six components:

  • Remembering
  • Understanding
  • Applying
  • Analysing
  • Evaluating
  • Creating

Applying Bloom's Taxonomy to lesson planning

Stanley Road Primary School and Nursery in Worcestershire shows in this example how it applies the taxonomy to music lessons, and how the different kinds of learning work in practice. For example, ‘knowing’ means remembering the names of musicians, while ‘creating’ is expressed as musical composition and improvisation.

Slide 15 demonstrates