Bloom’s Taxonomy of Action Verbs
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom first described a hierarchy of cognitive skills, with higher-level skills building upon those at lower levels. His hierarchy, and verbs associated with these various levels, have been extensively discussed, revised, and enlarged. The following is a short description of each cognitive skill.
Knowledge: Standards that ask the learner to recognize and recall facts and specifics; rote memorization
- Observation of information, memorizing
- Recognizing, recalling, identifying
- Knowledge of major ideas
- Mastery of subject matter
Comprehension: Standards that ask the learner to interpret, summarize, or paraphrase important information
- Understanding information
- Translating from one medium or context to another
- Interpreting facts
- Organization and selection of facts and ideas
- Describing in one’s own words
- Predict consequences
Application: Standards that ask the learner to use concepts in a situation different from the original learning context
- Use methods, concepts, theories in new situations
- Use of information, facts, rules and principles
- Solve problems using required skills or knowledge
- Applying information to produce some result
Analysis: Standards that ask the learner to separate the whole into its parts, differentiate between parts, and better understand the organization of the whole and the relationship between the parts
- Separation of a whole into component parts
- Finding the underlying structure of a message
- Seeing patterns
- Organization of parts
- Recognition of levels of meaning
- Identification of components
- Identifying motives
Synthesis: Standards that ask the learner to combine learned elements to form a new entity
- Use old ideas to create new ones
- Generalize from given facts
- Relate knowledge from several areas
- Predict, draw conclusions
Evaluation: Standards that ask the learner to make decisions, judge, or select based on criteria and rationale; look at others’ ideas or principles and see the worth of the work and the value of the methods and conclusions
- Compare and discriminate between ideas
- Assess value of theories, presentations
- Make choices based on reasoned argument
- Verify value of evidence
- Recognize subjectivity
- Resolve controversies
- Development of opinions, judgments, or decisions
Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Skills with Action Verbs List
As noted by Dr. Gavin Henning, a leading proponent of equitable assessment, there are other approaches to categorizing learning outcomes:
View additional resources collected by Dr. Henning.
Back to Top