From remembering to creating: guiding our students through Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy

Hi there! 👋

Today I’m going to introduce something that school teachers are already familiar with, for sure, but… as the old Latin saying goes, repetita iuvant! 😉

Sometimes, revisiting well-known concepts and looking at them through practical examples is exactly what we need to make ideas clearer, more meaningful and easier to apply in our everyday teaching practice.

So today, let’s talk about a powerful tool that can help us design learning experiences that truly support our students’ thinking journey: Bloom’s Taxonomy. 🌱

In our previous post about cooperative learning, we talked about Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) — those powerful thinking skills that allow our students to analyse, evaluate and create — often compared with Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS), which are connected to remembering and understanding information.

But here’s the important thing: both are essential! 💡

They are all part of one of the most famous tools in education: Bloom’s Taxonomy.

📚The six levels of the pyramid represent the different steps our learners go through as they build knowledge:

🔹 Remembering
Recalling facts, information and previously learned skills.

🔹 Understanding
Explaining, describing, comparing and making sense of information.

🔹 Applying
Using knowledge in new situations and real-life contexts.

🔹 Analyzing
Exploring information, identifying patterns and making connections.

🔹 Evaluating
Expressing opinions, making judgements and supporting ideas with evidence.

🔹 Creating
Designing, inventing and producing something new.

✨ Why is Bloom’s Taxonomy such a valuable tool when planning learning experiences?

Because learning is not just about collecting information. In fact, meaningful learning happens when students are gradually supported in moving from “I know this” to “I can use this, I can question it, I can create something with it.”

This is closely connected to Bruner’s scaffolding theory: as teachers, we build the right supports at the right time, accompanying our students step by step until they can become more independent learners.

For example, imagine introducing the topic of historical sources to a Grade 3 class. A possible learning journey could look like this:

📌 REMEMBERING activities

• Sharing what students already know about the past.

• Learning the definition of “historical source”.

• Identifying different types of sources and examples.

📌 UNDERSTANDING activities

• Classifying sources according to their type.

• Creating diagrams or organisers to describe their characteristics.

📌 APPLYING activities

• Bringing historical objects from home.

• Interviewing parents, grandparents or members of the school community to discover how objects were used in the past.

📌 ANALYZING activities

• Describing a source in detail: what it was used for, where it came from, why it was important, how it compares to modern versions.

• Looking for similarities and differences between objects brought by classmates.

• Creating mind maps about historical sources.

📌 EVALUATING activities

• Discussing which sources are the most valuable for historians and explaining why.

• Interpreting the meaning of a source within its historical context.

📌 CREATING activities

• Designing a presentation about the sources investigated.

• Creating a timeline showing how objects have changed over time.

• Building a classroom museum. 🏛️

The beautiful thing about Bloom’s Taxonomy is that it can be applied to any subject and any topic. Whether we are exploring science, history, languages or mathematics, this framework helps us design learning experiences that go beyond memorisation.

And there is another important connection: the development of these thinking skills is deeply linked to the development of competences. If we think of competence as the combination of knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and emotions that learners use in real situations, we immediately see why the top of the pyramid — analysing, evaluating and creating — is so important.

🌟 For this reason, understanding and applying Bloom’s Taxonomy is a powerful skill for every teacher. It is not only useful in IB contexts; it is a universal tool to help our students become curious, independent and lifelong learners.

Because the goal is not simply for children to remember more…

…it is for them to think more. 💭✨

Quiero leer este post en español

Cooperative Learning... but make it simple!

How can we implement cooperative learning in the classroom without adding even more to our workload?

The good news is... we absolutely can! 💛

With the right structures and routines, cooperative learning doesn't have to mean extra planning or complicated group activities. In fact, it can become one of the most effective—and manageable—parts of your teaching practice.

Research has consistently shown that cooperative learning helps children develop higher-order thinking skills, leading to deeper, more meaningful learning.

This idea is rooted in Vygotsky's theory, which tells us that children learn best through interaction. Whether they're learning from their teacher or from a more knowledgeable peer, meaningful conversations help them construct understanding together.

That's why cooperative learning has become such an important part of today's competency-based classrooms.

Buuut...

✨ What does effective cooperative learning actually look like?

I'm sure we're all aware that it's so much more than simply putting children into groups! Here's the list of the key ingredients for successful cooperative learning:

🤝 Mixed-ability groups where every child brings different strengths, ideas, and knowledge to the table. Together, they create something that's richer than what they could have achieved alone.

💬 Meaningful communication as children discuss, question, explain, and support one another. These conversations are where real learning happens.

⭐ Individual accountability because every child has an important role to play and is responsible for contributing to the group's success.

⚖️ Equal participation so every voice is heard and every learner has the opportunity to be actively involved.

🧩 Shared decision-making as children work together, solve problems, and make choices as a team.

👥 Face-to-face interaction, building not only knowledge but also confidence, empathy, and collaboration skills.

When all of these elements come together, cooperative learning becomes so much more than group work—it becomes a powerful learning experience for every child. 💛

The 5 basic structures and the skills 

✨ So... how can we actually bring cooperative learning into our classrooms?

By now, we know that this approach can develop so many important skills—but the big question is: where do we start? 💭

Take note of this name: Dr Spencer Kagan. ⭐

This psychologist and pioneer in the cooperative learning movement dedicated his work to helping teachers create more interactive and collaborative lessons, where children become not only more knowledgeable learners, but also more caring and cooperative ones.

His solution? Cooperative structures.

Dr Kagan designed more than 200 structures that can be easily integrated into our lessons without having to completely change our planning or rewrite our activities from scratch. 🙌

I personally use some of them depending on my teaching goals, and I can truly say that they are incredibly powerful tools. They encourage reflection, dialogue, active participation—and, most importantly, they motivate children to get involved in any subject we are exploring.

Some Kagan's stuctures

to Kagan, there are 5 essential structures that every teacher should learn first:

🤝 Rally Robin / Rally Table
Students work in pairs and take turns sharing answers, ideas, or solutions to a question or problem.

⏰ Timed Pair Share
One student shares their ideas for a set amount of time while their partner listens. Then they swap roles and, if desired, share their thoughts with the class.

🔄 Round Robin / Round Table
Students take turns contributing ideas or answers within their team, making sure everyone has a voice.

🧩 Rally Coach
Partners solve problems together: one student works while the other observes, supports, checks, and encourages.

🙋 Stand Up, Hand Up, Pair Up
Students move around the classroom, find a partner, and share or discuss a task using one of the previous structures.

My students use these structures very often, and I can honestly say that they lead to 100% participation. Even the quieter children feel more confident sharing their ideas, attention increases, and learning becomes much more meaningful. 💛

So don't be afraid to try them!

Once you see the impact they can have in your classroom, you won't want to go back. ✨

--> Quiero leer este post en castellano

On teamwork, problem solving and motivation

Summer has always brought new life experiences into my professional life, however, the one which has just ended will definitely be remembered as a special one. I experienced something that you could recreate in your own classroom, especially during these first days of school, when children are starting to get acquainted with each other again or for the very first time.

If you've been following my blog, you'll know that during the month of July I usually run a summer camp in an outdoor environment  with students not older than 6, where the main activities are games, songs, and crafts to help them learn some basic grammar and vocabulary. After this summer I can definitely say that little kids are easy to understand and work with; believe me, if they like the activity you have planned, 
they'll do it but if they don't, they'll get distracted by anything more interesting, and that's all. Simple and easy to grab.

Unexpectedly, this time I ended up working with slightly older children: a group of 6/8 girls, aged 6 to 9 , who had already started developing their own personalities, which made them completely different from one another, and especially sensitive to impolite leadership attempts. They made it clear from the very first day that this Summer Camp had to be totally different.

First of all I pointed out how essential it was to be polite to each other so that nobody would get offended: I introduced the frequent use of  'please' and 'thank you' and reminded them to use suggestions and express opinions instead of giving orders. This way, instead of saying 'do this and that' they would use should, might or would; in other words, they were being forced to use grammar like never before.
But not only that! The icing on the cake was the ban on the word 'NO' in any form: a more understanding 'YES, BUT…' had to be used instead.

The second step  focused on creating cooperation instead of competition by using team building games. Just by luck, I found a copy of "Silly Sports and Goofy Games", by Dr Spencer Kagan, on my overflowing bookcase,  which was exactly what I needed. Over the following weeks we played games such as  "Movement Chain", "Instamatic", "Detective", "Smile if You Love Me", and "Maze Walker", where the girls worked together to build a maze with their own stuff and all the leaves, rocks, sticks and pine needles they could find in the garden.

Furthermore, in order to encourage relationship skills and equal participation, every time an activity required splitting them into different teams, I made the groups by drawing from a bunch of popsicle sticks with their names on them; this way they couldn't complain about the group they ended up in, because, as I would tell them, 'the sticks rule'.

The third step was to begin each Monday by offering a selection of 3 or 4 week group projects, to choose from: a play, a dance show, the opening ceremony of the Olympics, etc.  Each time the main goal was to sit together and decide who was going to do what, how to do it, who was going to wear this or that costume, how to arrange the stage, etc. without screaming, arguing or crying. Once everybody was happy with the decisions, I would participate in the process and add my own suggestions and ideas. They would work together on the project for the following 3 days until, on Friday, they would present it to the other groups.

It was awesome to witness the development of their relationships and the way they ended up working together, communicating politely, making decisions which would suit everybody, showing enthusiasm, rehearsing in the afternoons to come well prepared the next morning. The atmosphere was so friendly and engaging that even the shy ones or those who weren't feeling so confident ended up improving their English speaking skills which you can read about on my  parents' comments page.  

Oh! And the shows themselves were amazing!