Using taxonomies to think about challenge

When students work in classrooms where collaborative learning is encouraged then differentiation becomes easier. All students in the class will be working on the same topic area, but by providing activities with a range of cognitive demands, students can work at their own level of understanding. While some students might be asked to recall or explain or apply ideas within the topic, others can be encouraged to predict or synthesise or critique. Schemata like Bloom’s Taxonomy or SOLO can be useful for teachers in planning these types of activities. By organising the class so that students can share their thinking through dialogue means that all students can benefit from this.

Suggest

There are many different ways you can use schemata like Bloom’s and SOLO to support differentiated learning. How have you used these taxonomies already in your teaching?

If you are new to Bloom’s or SOLO, consider how you could use these or other taxonomies to increase the cognitive demand of the work and how you would organise your classroom so that students can collaborate to share their thinking.

Suggest one or two approaches in the comments below.

When students work in classrooms where collaborative learning is encouraged then differentiation becomes easier. All students in the class will be working on the same topic area, but by providing activities with a range of cognitive demands, students can work at their own level of understanding. While some students might be asked to recall or explain or apply ideas within the topic, others can be encouraged to predict or synthesise or critique.