Developing Thinking Skills

(Bloom's Taxonomy)

The use of critical thinking is one of the most valuable skills we can pass on to our children. However, in order to develop a child's thinking skill, we need to ask questions. It is how we word the questions that make a difference. Certain types of questions require us to use different levels of thinking.  

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom, a professor at the University of Chicago, shared his famous "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" with the world. Bloom identified different levels of cognitive complexity that have been used over the past four decades to make sure that instruction stimulates and develops students' higher-order thinking skills. According to Bloom's Taxonomy, this well-known classification system, thinking skills or levels of learning can be placed in six categories.  

The Levels are:  Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation.