Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification system used to define and categorise various cognitive skills and levels of learning. Read my full article on Bloom’s for background.
Bloom’s Taxonomy verbs are helpful tools for educators and course designers to construct meaningful learning objectives, questions, and activities that enable learners to move through various levels of understanding and mastery. Using these verbs also assists in assessing learning progress, ensuring that the objectives are measurable and aligned with the desired outcomes.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a useful tool for learning designers
This is a classroom question-stem bank organised by the six revised Bloom levels. A stem is a starting phrase, not a guarantee of cognitive demand. The complete task, the knowledge required and the criteria decide the level.
Use it to plan discussion and written questions. It is not a printable PDF unless you export the page yourself. Last reviewed: 30 August 2026.
Question stems by level. Check the whole task before you assign a level.
Bloom’s Taxonomy questions
Plan questions against the lesson objective. Use closed questions to check recall. Use open questions when you want explanation, comparison or judgement. Move up the levels only when learners have something worth thinking with. For the framework itself, see the introduction.
Remember
Retrieve facts, terms or simple sequences. Worked example in science: “List the parts of a plant cell named in yesterday’s diagram.”
Can you name …?
What is …?
When did …?
List … in order.
What do you remember about …?
How would you define …, using the glossary meaning?
Where in the text does it say …?
Understand
Construct meaning: explain, summarise, give an example. Worked example in history: “Explain in your own words why the 1913 Land Act mattered to black South African farmers.”
How would you summarise …?
What is the main idea of …?
Can you explain … in your own words?
Give an example of …
What does … mean in this context?
How is … different from …, at the level of meaning rather than judgement?
Apply
Use a method in a new but similar situation. Worked example in maths: “Use the percentage method we practised to calculate the discount on this price.”
How would you use … to …?
What would you need to do to apply … here?
Can you show how … works with this new example?
Using the rule, solve …
Where else could you apply …?
Analyse
Break material into parts and relate them. Worked example in English: “Which details in the extract support the narrator’s claim, and which details undermine it?”
How does … relate to …?
What are the parts of …?
Which evidence supports …?
What pattern do you notice in …?
How would you distinguish … from …?
What is the function of … in the whole?
Evaluate
Judge against stated criteria. Worked example in geography: “Using the three criteria on the board, which flood-management option is stronger for this town, and why?”
Which option is stronger, according to …?
How would you justify …?
What are the strengths and limits of …?
Is … valid, given …?
How well does … meet the criteria?
What would you recommend, and on what grounds?
Stems such as “What is the best one?” belong here only if criteria are named. They do not belong under Remember.
Create
Put elements together into an original product or plan. Worked example in technology: “Design a poster that teaches one safety rule to Grade 4, using only the facts we checked.”
How would you design …?
What would you compose to …?
Can you propose an alternative that still meets …?
How would you combine … to produce …?
What plan would you construct for …?
Using AI with these stems
A chatbot can draft extra stems. You still have to check classification, reading level and subject accuracy. A verb is not proof of the level.
Example: if you ask for Remember questions on plant cells and the model returns “Which option is stronger, and why?”, that is Evaluate, not Remember. Keep this stem bank beside the output and reject the mismatch.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a framework for describing educational objectives in the cognitive domain. A committee chaired by Benjamin Bloom published the original handbook in 1956. A 2001 revision, led by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl, restated the levels as verbs and added a knowledge dimension.
It is a widely used planning tool. It is not “the most important education framework”, and it does not by itself prove that learning must always move in a strict ladder. Last reviewed: 30 August 2026.
The six revised cognitive levels. Use them as a planning language, not as a law of the brain.
Who was involved
Bloom chaired the group. He did not invent every later domain by himself. The 1956 handbook is the cognitive domain. Affective objectives were published later. Psychomotor taxonomies were developed by other authors. Krathwohl worked on the original project and on the revision, so “two former students of Bloom” is the wrong story for Anderson and Krathwohl together.
The six revised levels
Remember: retrieve knowledge.
Understand: construct meaning.
Apply: use a procedure in a situation.
Analyse: break material into parts and relate them.
Evaluate: judge against criteria.
Create: put elements together into a new product or structure.
The 2001 revision also asks what kind of knowledge is in play: factual, conceptual, procedural or metacognitive. A remember task about a procedure is not the same as a remember task about a name.
A worked example
In a lesson on water safety: remember the named signs; understand what “strong current” means; apply the rule to a new beach photo; analyse why two sources disagree; evaluate which warning is clearer for Grade 5; create a short briefing for parents. Each step needs its own evidence. The verb alone is not enough.
Limits
The original authors did not claim that the brain always works in one direction, or that remembering requires no understanding in any sense. Teachers should not treat lower levels as worthless, or higher levels as moral superiority. For ready-to-use questions see question stems. For alignment of objectives, activities and assessment see the practical guide. For digital tasks see Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.
Sources
Bloom, B. S. (ed.) (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain.
Anderson, L. W. and Krathwohl, D. R. (eds.) (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing.
Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). “A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview.” Theory Into Practice 41(4), 212-218.
Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy is Andrew Churches’ 2008 adaptation of the revised Bloom framework for digital classroom tasks. It does not mean that a named app sits at a cognitive level. The objective, the reasoning required and the assessment criteria set the demand. The tool is only the medium.
This page is the digital-task companion to a beginner introduction and a practical guide. It is personal commentary, not a new official taxonomy. Last reviewed: 30 August 2026.
The revised cognitive levels still organise the work. Digital tasks sit under those levels; they do not replace them.
Who developed it
Benjamin Bloom chaired a committee whose 1956 handbook described educational objectives in the cognitive domain. Later work covered the affective domain. Other authors developed psychomotor accounts. Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl led the 2001 revision. Krathwohl had also worked on the original project, so it is misleading to call both men simply “former students of Bloom”.
Andrew Churches mapped digital activities onto the revised verbs: remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, create. His contribution was a classroom heuristic for the then-new web, not a replacement of the 2001 knowledge dimension.
How to use it without chasing tools
Ask what the learner must do with knowledge, then pick a durable digital task type. Avoid mapping “Google = remember” or “Wikipedia = apply”. Searching can be recall, or it can be analysis, depending on the question.
Level
Digital task types that can fit
Safeguard
Remember
Retrieve a fact from a named source; list; bookmark for later use
Do not require public accounts for basic retrieval
Understand
Summarise in own words; tag and group sources; explain a diagram
Check copyright before copying text or images
Apply
Use a method in a new example; edit a shared document to a brief
School-approved tools only; no personal data in public wikis
Analyse
Compare sources; sort survey or class data; identify bias in a page
Consent before surveying people; no contacting strangers
Evaluate
Judge a source against criteria; moderate a comment with a rubric
Age, privacy and school policy before any public critique
Create
Produce an original digital artefact that meets a brief
Accessibility, attribution, and no pressure to publish commercially
Obsolete consumer tools such as Delicious, Google Bookmarks and consumer Skype should not be taught as current practice. If a platform has closed or changed, keep the task type and change the example.
AI in this picture
Generative AI can support drafting, practice questions or feedback sketches at several levels. It does not create a separate “AI taxonomy”, and it does not handle “lower-level” thinking on the learner’s behalf. The tool still does not set the cognitive level. The task does. If the learner only pastes a prompt and submits the output, the cognitive work has not been done. Keep learner data inside approved systems, and require human review of anything that will be marked or published.
