Bloom s Taxonomy Level 3 Application

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Blooms Taxonomy

• Level 3
• Application

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• Deborah Hardwick
• Manager, Online Tutoring
• Houston Community College
• 713-718-5340
• deborah.hardwick_at_hccs.edu
• Executive Board Member, ATP
• There is only one speakers note in this
  presentation. The main slide (21) tells you
  about it.

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Level 3 - Application

• Although many students come to tutoring with the
  idea that working at the first two levels
  (knowledge and understanding) is enough, the
  third level (application) is where real learning
  begins.

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What is Application?

• Use of a concept in a new situation or unprompted
  use of an abstraction.
• Application of what was learned in the classroom
  in novel situations.
• http//www.nwlink.com/Donclark/hrd/bloom.html

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What Does That Mean?

• It is not enough to simply know something. If
  the learner cannot transfer the knowledge to a
  new situation, it has not really been learned.

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• For example, I can know all the parts of a
  carburetor to label them on a diagram, but if I
  cannot find them in the car, I dont really know
  what a carburetor is.
• If I cant figure out that other machines besides
  cars have carburetors, I also dont understand
  the concept.

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• If I can make the association between a
  carburetor and the lungs in the human body, Im
  getting closer to really understanding what a
  carburetor is.
• OK, enough of carburetors ...

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The Coolest Example I Know

• Several years ago, I met a woman who taught
  welding at Albuquerque TVI. She got a small grant
  to take her welding students and their families
  to the Albuquerque zoo for a day. The families
  enjoyed the animals and had a picnic.
• Where do welding and Bloom come in?

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• Students had to draw, identify, and assess at
  least ten different types of welds at the zoo.
  They had to predict which welds were at the point
  of failure and suggest alternate types of welds
  for different applications. Back in class, they
  had to reproduce one of the welds that they had
  not worked with earlier.

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Key Words

• Assignments that encourage application often
  include these key words
• Apply, change, compute, construct, demonstrate,
  discover, manipulate, modify, operate, predict,
  prepare, produce, relate, show, solve, use,
  dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, and
  practice.

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How Do These Apply to Tutoring?

• In a short tutoring session, as opposed to a
  semester of teaching, the use of Level 3
  strategies can reinforce what has been taught in
  the classroom as well as start the student on the
  path to true understanding.
• Every subject and every level of instruction can
  benefit from application exercises.

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What Happens in the Tutoring Center?

• Johnny is taking Anatomy and Physiology. He is
  supposed to learn the bones in the human leg.
  He wants a simple mnemonic device to memorize the
  names of the bones.

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• As a tutor, you could teach him Peter fries
  funky tacos (Patella, fibula, femur, tibia).
• You could ask him to point to the bones on a
  diagram, draw a diagram, explain the difference
  between the fibula and the tibia, or find the
  bones in his own leg.

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Or ...

• You could ask him to demonstrate the way the
  patella works, predict the result of a break in
  each bone, or explain the function of each bone.
  Ask him to find ten people who have had broken
  legs, discover which bone had been broken, and
  analyze the differences in how long each break
  took to heal.

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What about in Math?

• Susie is having trouble understanding the concept
  of negative numbers.
• As a tutor, you could give her a definition, ask
  her to memorize and recite that definition,
  paraphrase the definition, or have her identify
  the negative numbers in a series.

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Or ...

• You could help her brainstorm situations in which
  negative numbers might be used.
• An overdrawn checking account
• A winter weather report from up north
• Basements and sub-basements
• Susie could be asked to keep a journal of all the
  times in a week that she uses negative numbers.

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In Reading Classes

• George cannot follow the path of ideas. The
  beginning and end of the story often seem
  disconnected to him. As a result, he gets
  frustrated and is failing his class.

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• A tutor who is knowledgeable about Bloom can make
  great use of the predictive application.
• From a single introductory paragraph, ask George
  to imagine several possible outcomes. Have him
  write them down on flashcards or separate pages.

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• Add the next paragraph. Ask him to eliminate all
  possible outcomes that the second paragraph
  precludes.
• Continue through the third paragraph, again
  eliminating unlikely outcomes.
• Finally, from those he has left, ask George to
  predict which is the most likely. After he has
  selected one, ask George to read the conclusion.

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• If he was right, discuss what clues gave him the
  information.
• If he was wrong, help him discover where he went
  off course.

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Using Short Stories in Tutoring

• Jeffrey Archer is my favorite short story author.
  All of his short stories have surprise endings.
  (See note for titles.)
• Helping students discover exactly where in a
  story the twist is foreshadowed is a great way
  to help advanced students look at literature
  more analytically. It also helps them add
  interest to their own writing by incorporating
  elements of surprise or misdirection.

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It works in English, too.

• English tutoring is, perhaps, the most fertile
  area for Level 3 strategies. Manipulating a
  students work is a great way to teach new skills
  that build on the basics.
• Years ago, I taught from a book called Twenty-Six
  Steps. Unfortunately, I cannot recall the author
  or publisher.

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• It was a low-level ESL text that gave students a
  paragraph. Perhaps it was all in the present
  tense. First, they had to modify it to change all
  the verbs to the past tense. Then, they had to
  change feminine pronouns to masculine ones. Next,
  they changed singulars to plurals, perhaps. That
  series of manipulations clearly showed how making
  just one change required many other
  modifications.

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The same process of modification works with
vocabulary enhancement

• Ask Maria to write a simple sentence with a
  common subject and a basic verb.
• The girl walked.
• Then ask her to add an adjective.
• The pretty girl walked.
• Next, ask her to add an adverb.
• The pretty girl walked sexily.

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• Ask her to add a prepositional phrase.
• The pretty girl walked sexily into the prom.
• Then, she can change the common noun to a proper
  one.
• Maria walked sexily into the prom.
• Finally, she can change the verb to a more
  expressive one.
• Maria sashayed into the prom.

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Moving from the Classroom to the Real World Up
the Blooms Ladder

• It is never enough for students to learn isolated
  facts. Facts without context may make someone a
  great trivia player, but there are few
  opportunities for Trivial Pursuit players to go
  professional!

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• Helping students incorporate what they learn in
  any and every class and apply it to their own
  lives, jobs, families, hobbies, and goals should
  be one of the foremost goals of any tutor. Only
  by seeing the connection between isolated facts
  and the real world can students go on to become
  successful in whatever they choose to do.

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• Blooms Taxonomy is not the end-all and be-all of
  learning or tutoring, but it provides a stable
  framework upon which to build.