Understanding Bloom’s Taxonomy

This 2017 explainer by Jim Reams introduced Bloom’s Taxonomy, its 2001 revision and its link to rigor and the flipped classroom. A new section below, written in 2026, adds the revised levels and verbs and shows how teachers can use the chart to check a lesson.

How are educators using it to increase rigor and results?

edCircuit Breakdown

Most educators have heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy, which is an ordering of cognitive skills used in learning. But many don’t realize two of Benjamin Bloom’s students revised it in 2001. The result in some cases is what educators are calling an “outcomes-based syllabus.”

Despite the fact that Bloom’s original research and publishing occurred in the 1950s, it is still relevant in today’s digital world. In India, some are using it to support raising the digital quotient of students.

There are pitfalls if educators try to implement digital tools to teach following the hierarchy of Bloom’s. Jon Bergmann says the solution is what he calls the flipped classroom, which inverts Bloom’s pyramid with technology.

edCircuit Analysis

Educators familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy know that the cognitive pyramid from top to bottom is as follows: create, evaluate, analyze, apply, understand and remember. In layman’s terms, the top of the pyramid represents critical thinking and working your way down you eventually end up at the most basic cognitive function of simply remembering a fact.

Striking the right balance between higher and lower level thinking in the classroom is a key to successful teaching. Some argue that it comes down to rigor in the classroom.

As Todd Stanley points out, rigor is not synonymous with hard or difficult. Many educators think that making things harder makes their class and teaching more rigorous, but, he says, this simply isn’t the case.

Stanley says, “In order to be rigorous, students need to be in the top half of Bloom’s chart. They need to either be analyzing, evaluating or creating in order to access their high levels of thinking. The question becomes, how much of this is being done in the classroom?”

So, Bloom’s research is still relevant. Educators who want to improve their teaching and student outcomes are always tweaking things, even if it is tweaking things using research from the 1950s.

Levels of Bloom’s taxonomy: the pyramid, the revised verbs and how teachers use them

The levels of Bloom’s taxonomy are six steps of thinking, arranged from simple recall to creating something new. Jim Reams listed them in 2017 as a pyramid, and this section adds the chart, the revised wording of each level and a sample of the verbs teachers use to write questions and tasks at each one.

Where the taxonomy comes from

Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Innovation describes the taxonomy as a set of hierarchical categories of educational objectives, first published by Benjamin Bloom and colleagues in 1956 and updated in 2001 by Anderson and Krathwohl, and it notes that the update still informs how learning outcomes and tasks are written (Cornell Teaching Innovation, Bloom’s Taxonomy). A summary by Krathwohl, A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview, appeared in the journal Theory Into Practice in 2002, as the Rutgers verb page below cites. The pyramid is a common way of drawing the levels. The sources read for this update describe the categories as ordered steps, and the picture is a teaching aid, not a measurement.

The revised levels, from the base of the pyramid to the top

A verb list compiled by Newton, Da Silva and Peters in 2020 and posted by Rutgers follows the revised order. Each level is now named with a verb instead of a noun, and the list shows the original name in brackets.

1. Remember (originally Knowledge): list, define, recall, state, label, repeat, name.
2. Understand (originally Comprehension): paraphrase, discuss, explain, classify, summarize, locate.
3. Apply (originally Application): use, demonstrate, solve, produce, prepare, choose.
4. Analyze (originally Analysis): compare, contrast, categorize, distinguish, examine, infer, outline.
5. Evaluate (originally Evaluation): rate, assess, judge, justify.
6. Create (originally Synthesis): design, compose, plan, formulate, revise, argue.

The same page notes that the original scheme ranked Synthesis fifth and Evaluation sixth, and that the revision reverses them, so the top of the revised pyramid is Create. A teacher who finds an older chart with Evaluation at the top is looking at the 1956 order.

Using the chart to check a lesson

A practical way to use the chart is to write down the verb in each question or task of a lesson and see where most of them sit. A worksheet of twenty items that all begin with define or list is working at the first level, which has a place, because students need facts to think with, but it does not reach the analysis and judgment that Todd Stanley describes in Stanley’s article on rigor. As Reams reports above, Stanley says students need to be analyzing, evaluating or creating to reach high levels of thinking, and that rigor is not the same as difficulty. A task that is long or hard but only asks students to recall is not rigorous in this sense. The verb is a clue and not a rule: it is the task that decides the level, so read the whole assignment before labeling it.

Teachers writing tests can do the same check. A unit assessment with a mix of recall, application and one extended task at the analyze or create level gives a fuller picture of what students can do than one built from a single type. The assessment ideas in edCircuit’s assessment guide pair well with this kind of planning.

How the flipped classroom fits

The original mentions Jon Bergmann’s flipped classroom. Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching describes it in its guide Flipping the Classroom by Cynthia Brame. In terms of the revised taxonomy, students do the lower levels of work, gaining knowledge and comprehension, outside class through reading or video, and use class time for the higher levels such as application, analysis and evaluation, with support from peers and the teacher. That is the sense in which the pyramid is turned over: the base is done at home and the top is done together.

The guide cites several studies, and one is worth describing carefully. Deslauriers and colleagues compared two sections of a large physics class, and in the experimental week, after first exposure to the material came through reading assignments and quizzes before class and class time went to small-group discussion, that section scored an average of 74 percent on a multiple-choice test, against 41 percent for the other. The guide says the authors did not address whether the gains lasted, and the study covered a single week in one physics course, so the result should not be applied straight to a middle school class. It does support the idea that class time is best spent on the harder thinking.

Limits to keep in mind

Cornell’s page also notes that the verbs may be applied beyond cognitive tasks, to emotional and physical learning, so Bloom’s chart is one lens and not a full account of a lesson. For teachers, a useful habit is to review a unit and ask whether students have a chance, at least once, to analyze, judge or make something of their own.

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