A Reader Asks... Old or New Bloom's

A new LYS Teacher asks:

“SC

There has been some confusion the LYS training and the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The websites we have reviewed have old and new lists. We need to find out which version we are expected to use. Can you email me the official list?

Old Bloom’s: Knowledge – Comprehension – Application – Analysis – Synthesis – Evaluation

New Bloom’s: Remembering – Understanding – Applying – Analyzing – Evaluating - Creating

Thanks for the help!”

SC Response

LYS doesn’t endorse an “Official Bloom’s List.” We simply recognize that there is the Rigor Taxonomy originally developed by Bloom and an updated (re-labeled) taxonomy. Both address levels of cognition in terms of increasing complexity. In practical terms, the old and the new are inter-changeable. We use the old version during our introductory trainings because it is the version that most teachers are familiar with it. There is nothing like accessing existing schema to speed up the understanding of new concepts.

In regards to Instructional Relevance (also discussed in the training you attended), LYS has modified the levels of relevance, based on our ongoing field research. The LYS model includes "Knowledge Across Content Areas." However, in later LYS trainings, we actually simplify the concept of Relevance, to just three levels: In Content; Cross Content; Real World.

I want to highlight the important ideas we wanted you to take from the LYS training you participated in this summer:

1. The overwhelming majority of classroom instruction occurs, in the content area, at the knowledge and comprehension levels.

2. This is primarily due to the sources of curriculum and generations of ingrained teacher habit.

3. This is the first generation of teachers who have been expected to consistently teach at higher levels of rigor and relevance, and to do so with every student.

4. Increasing the Rigor and Relevance of instruction is less difficult than it seems and can be accomplished with slight changes to the way teachers plan, small modifications to normal instructional activities, and the purposeful stretching of typical teacher practices (which was the primary focus of the training on your campus).

I appreciate your enthusiasm, further reading and inquiry. I hope this answers your questions. If it doesn't, just let me know and we'll keep working on it.

Think. Work. Achieve.

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