Moving Toward Complete Alignment In Social Studies
Understanding How To Apply Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
Today’s Presentation Will Assist Participants With:
Understanding how to use
the Revised Bloom’s
Taxonomy (RBT) to align
classroom instruction and
assessment to the new
social studies essential
standards.
2
Pre-Assessment
3/22/2016 • page 3
Pre-Assessment
Question # 1
How should you use
the table below in
instruction and
assessment?
Answer
The RBT Taxonomy Table
should be used to help
determine the learning
experiences and
assessment tasks for
which you ask students to
participate.
3/22/2016 • page 4
Pre-Assessment
Question #2
True or False? The assessment
below is aligned to the clarifying
objective.
CO: Summarize the change in cultures,
everyday life, and status of indigenous
American Indian groups in North Carolina
before and after European exploration.
Assessment:
The lives of American Indians
were changed when Europeans
came to the New World . Tell
how farming, hunting and
everyday life within their tribes
changed for the American
Indians.
Answer
False
An Appropriate Assessment:
Have the student read a passage
that describes changes in American
Indians’ culture and lives.
Read the passage above and write a
few sentences describing how life
changed for American Indians as a
result of European exploration of
the New World.
3/22/2016 • page 5
NC’s New Lens: Revised
Bloom’s Taxonomy (RBT)
3/22/2016 • page 7
Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (RBT)
 Provides a common language for all
curriculum areas by indicating what a
learning or assessment task was
intended to measure
 by cognitive type
 by type of knowledge
 Provides a framework that may “help
teachers plan and deliver appropriate
instruction, design valid assessment
tasks and strategies, and ensure that
instruction and assessment are aligned
with the objectives.” (p.xxii)
The Alignment Question
How does one ensure that objectives,
instruction and assessment are
consistent with one another?
?
?
?
The Structure of Curriculum
Students
Learning Experiences/Performance Tasks
Materials and Equipment
Image of students with globe. Image no. 3Q1675
Photo by Will & Deni McIntyre
The Importance of Alignment
“Alignment is an even stronger predictor of student
achievement on standardized tests than are
socioeconomic status, gender, race, and teacher effect.”
~ Elmore & Rothman, 1999: Mitchell, 1998; Wishnick,1989
Content Alignment
“Does the teacher teach and
assess the factual, conceptual, and
procedural knowledge outlined in
the curriculum?”
Cognitive Type Alignment
“Do the students get to work
and think at the level the
curriculum prescribes?”
Context Alignment
“Are the parameters of the
assessment reasonably similar to
the parameters of the instruction?”
Learning occurs best when there is a purposeful
process that creates complete alignment.
Let’s Perform A Quick Activity
Directions:
By yourself, classify the 13 original
colonies according to which were
New England, Middle or Southern.
(2 minutes )
New England
Colonies
Middle
Colonies
Southern
Colonies
Thirteen Original Colonies
1. Virginia
2. Rhode Island
3. Georgia
4. New York
5. Delaware
6. New Jersey
7. North Carolina
8. South Carolina
9. Pennsylvania
10. Massachusetts
11. New Hampshire
12. Maryland
13. Connecticut
Now, Let’s Assess
Directions:
Using the map place the 13 colonies with their correct alphabet and
indicate numerically the chronological order each was established from
1 to 13. (2 minutes
)
How Did You Do?
The Cognitive Dimension Is The Alignment
For Standards & Assessment
Remember
Retrieving relevant knowledge from long term
memory… (verbatim, unchanged by student)
Cognitive Processes:
1.1 Recognizing (identifying)
1.2 Recalling (retrieving)
Remembering is essential for
meaningful learning and problemsolving.
It is used in more complex tasks.
Recall Or Recognition?
Question
What is the effect if the teacher does not clarify
the differences between RECOGNIZE and
RECALL when preparing an assessment?
Answer
The assessment will be
misaligned with the objective and possibly
instruction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1RjI7G8rFw&feature=related
The line of demarcation among the
6 cognitive categories is REMEMBER
Remember
All others
rote learning
meaningful learning (transfer)
 Rote learning requires students to
remember what they learned.
 Transfer requires students to remember but
also make sense of what they have
learned.
Understand
Constructing meaning from instructional messages,
including oral, written and graphic communication
Cognitive Processes:







2.1 Interpreting
2.2 Exemplifying
2.3 Classifying
2.4 Summarizing
2.5 Inferring
2.6 Comparing
2.7 Explaining
 Understand cognitive processes are the most
represented in state standards
 More cognitive processes are associated with
this category than any other category

The learner grasps the meaning of information
by interpreting and translating what has been
learned.
An Assessment Example
Cognitive
Processes
Summarize
Clarifying Objective
CE.PFL.2.2
Summarize various types
of fraudulent solicitation
and business practices.
Example
Assessment
Read the following article:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/subjects/f/frauds_and_swin
dling/ponzi_schemes/index.html?inline
=nyt-classifier
or
Watch the following clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsS
GZezvuSg
Summarize in three
sentences or less the
fraudulent business practice
described in either the
article or video clip.
An Assessment Example
Cognitive
Processes
Explain
Clarifying Objective
WH.6.1
Explain how new ideas
and theories of the
universe altered political
thought and affected
economic and social
conditions.
Example
Assessment
Construct a cause and
effect graphic organizer
explaining how a scientific
or enlightened thinker’s
ideas impacted political,
economic, or social
conditions in 17TH & 18TH
century America.
VOLTAIRE
Believed in the principle of religious freedom.
He envisioned a secular, tolerant society. He
saw formal religion as irrational and
superstitious.
He believed in justice and reason above
feelings and despised democracy as the rule
of the mob.
His affirmation of civil rights and the principle
of religious freedom would find expression in
the U.S. Constitution and its guarantees of
freedoms of speech, the press, and religion.
His ideas helped secure separation of state
from church in America.
Analyze
Break material into its constituent parts and determine how the
parts relate to one another and to an overall purpose.
Cognitive Processes:
 4.1 Differentiating [e.g. the relevant from the irrelevant
parts.]
 4.2 Organizing [Identifying the elements of a
communication or situation and recognizing how they
fit together in a coherent structure. The student builds
systematic and coherent connections among pieces of
presented information.]
 4.3 Attributing [the underlying purpose or
perspective – reading between the lines.]
Examples of Assessing Analyze
Cognitive
Processes Of
Analyze
Differentiating
Organizing
Attributing
Example
Learning Objective
The student will
distinguish the major
and minor points in
research reports.
The student will structure
a historical description
into evidence for and
against a particular
explanation.
The student will
determine the point of
view of the author of an
essay on a controversial
topic.
Example
Assessment
Circle the main points in
an archeological report
on an ancient Mayan city.
Write an outline that shows which
facts, in the book Ancient Maya:
The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest
Civilization, support and which
facts do not support the
conclusion that the decline of the
civilization was caused by
influences of the Europeans.
Determine if a report on the
decline of the Mayan rainforest
was written from a proenvironmental or pro-economic
point of view.
Evaluate
Make judgments based on criteria and standards.
Cognitive Processes:

5.1 Checking [testing for
internal consistencies or fallacies
in an operation or product –
check as you go along]

5.2 Critiquing [judging a product
or operation based on externally
imposed criteria and standards.]
Examples of Assessing Evaluate
Cognitive
Processes Of
Evaluate
Example
Learning Objective
Example
Assessment
Checking
The student will check
for internal
inconsistencies in
persuasive messages.
Watch a television
advertisement for a
political candidate and
point out any logical flaws
in the persuasive
message.
Critiquing
The student will judge
the merits of a product,
effect or occurrence
based on specified or
agreed upon criteria
and standards.
Evaluate key points in a
political candidate’s
speech in terms of the
potential impact each
point may have on
citizens.
When you combine the verbs (cognitive processes)
with the nouns (knowledge) you end up with a
two-dimensional table.
32
Analyze colonization in terms of the
desire for access to resources and
markets as well as the consequences on
indigenous cultures, population, and
environment .
33
Construct maps, charts, and graphs
to explain data about geographic
phenomena.
34
Your Turn To Practice
Directions:
1. Working with a group or a partner, determine where the clarifying
objective you are working with lies on the Taxonomy Table.
2. With your group or partner come up with a classroom assessment
for the clarifying objective.
(5 minutes
)
Choose to work with either the middle or high school objective.
Middle School
6.H.2.1 Explain how invasions, conquests, and migrations affected various
civilizations, societies and regions (e.g. Mongol invasion, The Crusades, the
Peopling of the Americas and Alexander the Great).
High School
WH.5.2 Explain the causes and effects of exploration and expansion.
3/22/2016 • page 35
Some Conclusions About RBT
 To solve shared problems in instruction
and assessment, we need a shared
system of classification (an agreed upon
taxonomy).
 That shared taxonomy provides a common
way to ensure that instruction and
assessment are aligned with the
objectives and a common language to
talk about them.
 Without a shared taxonomy, learning,
instruction and assessment have the
potential to be all over the place.
RBT is our
shared
taxonomy!
3/22/2016 • page 37
3/22/2016 • page 38