Memory & Bloom's Taxonomy

Introduction

Memories are made and stored through the manipulation of manageable information. Bloom's Taxonomy diagrams different levels of this manipulation and ultimately depicts how our brain learns. Basically, the more you use, or "work" with an idea and the more complex your "work" is with it, the more it will stick in your memory.

What does this all mean in relation to your school work? It means that if you build-in Bloom's Taxonomy practices into your study routine, you will end-up studying with less stress and less cramming. Awesome!

Memory

Memory is like a funnel, where the small end faces towards "sensory memory," and the large end faces towards "long -term memory." Sensory memory does not have much of a capacity to handle information, whereas long-term memory can theoretically hold information indefinitely.

Sensory memory refers to all of the stimuli happening around us that comes from our senses: sight, smell, touch, sound, and sight. Since there is so much sensory stimuli happening at the same time, sensory memory can only handle so much information. Whatever is not paid attention to immediately is forgotten within seconds.

The stimuli we pay attention to gets "worked-on," or processed by our brains. Short-term memory (working memory) can handle around 7-9 pieces of information. Whatever is not rehearsed within seconds is forgotten.

Long-term memory has the largest capacity. The more information is used, understood, and manipulated, the more it will enter and stay in long-term memory.

Our sensory and short-term memories are limited in both the length and the amount of information it can hold. Memory for information drops off rapidly at first but then levels off after time. Only 44% of newly learned material is retained after one hour. This means we forget over 50% of material we learn within one hour! After this initial drop, our “forgetting” appears to level off.

To keep information fresh and readily accessible, we must do retrieval practices, and that is where Bloom's Taxonomy can help.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification system that is important for both students and teachers in helping to understand the skills and structures involved in learning. It helps us understand exactly how humans receive, absorb, generate, and transmit thought—and also how they learn.

With Bloom's Taxonomy, there is a hierarchy of six steps, each one building off-of the previous. To commit information to memory, it's a good idea to work with it from the easiest to the hardest steps, with each one building off of the previous:

Bloom's Taxonomy is divided into six main learning-skill levels, or learning-skill stages, which are arranged hierarchically—moving from the simplest of functions like remembering and understanding, to more complex learning skills, like applying and analyzing, to the most complicated skills—evaluating and creating. The lower levels are more straightforward and fundamental, and the higher levels are more sophisticated.

The table below breaks apart each level for you:

You may also read more about Bloom's Taxonomy in this brief article:

Journal

1. Knowing what you have just learned about memory, why do active reading strategies work?

2. Looking at the different active reading strategies and steps we have learned over the past few lessons, which level do each of them fall on Bloom's Taxonomy?

3. Which active reading strategies and/or steps do you want to adopt into your own practice? Why?

Key Takeaways

• There are different types of memory.

• The more active a person is with information, the more the person will remember it.

• The higher-up Bloom's Taxonomy a person uses information, the more the person will remember it long term and be able to adapt it in different situations.