Bloom's Taxonomy Anchor Chart Activity

At the beginning of the year, I have my Bloom's Taxonomy Anchor Chart hanging in the room

(You can download this freebie from my TPT store here.)

As a class, we discuss what each level means.  We go through examples of simpler content  -  "What might addition at the Comprehension level be like?"  "How might we show that we are at the Evaluate level in finding main idea and details?"  I will then give students examples of questions, and with a partner, they will label them with the various levels.  

Once students have an understanding of what the levels mean, we have a lesson about self-evaluation and metacognition (a word they fall in love with!  I mean, who wouldn't have fun saying metacognition?).  This lesson is very important as it teaches students to be purposeful about their thinking and to notice when they do not understand or do not understand at the right level.  It is integral to discuss the importance of an honest self-evaluation.  Students love giving scenarios of how pretending you understand more/less than you do can hurt your education and future.  We play a "If you evaluate yourself wrong then...." game that ends up with crazy results kind of like those Direct TV commercials that tell you not to end up with a grandson who wears a dog collar.  They totally have fun with this.  

All of these activities/lessons are important to having students take ownership of their learning, but they also lead to my differentiated activities.  

This is an example of a self-leveling differentiated math activity dealing with equations and  creating function tables that you can download here.  Go here for a freebie of a similar factor activity that does not have the first page..

Doing the actual activity with the students allowed them to see how important honest reflection was as well.  The discussions they had were amazing.  I kept hearing, "Wow!  I thought I understood this, but I think I still need to be at ______ level" or "Hmm....I didn't realize I knew that much!"  It's always nice to hear this type of discussion from students.

Be sure to stop by my TPT store to download these activities.  If you use them, let me know how they work out for you!