The Big 6 and Bloom's Taxonomy

Hello Everyone,

The Big 6 and Bloom's Taxonomy

When reading about The Big 6 teaching approach developed by Mike Eisenberg and Bob Berkowitz, I was ecstatic to see they had made a point to recognise the need for students to be given the tools and skills to be able to ‘think smarter’ instead of overloading them with information. This recognises and supports the notion that students of today need more than the ability to parrot information feed to them, they need to develop the ability to be resilient lifelong learners with extensive skills to understand, find, process and use information as well as actively problem solve and utilise higher order thinking skills.  This is similar to Bloom’s Taxonomy in the regards it leads learners through a process to complete tasks to a high level and encourages student to confirm their understanding through questioning.

Bellow are two brief diagrams which overview the steps involved in The Big 6 and Bloom’s Taxonomy:

Courtesy of: big6.com

Courtesy of:  imteachingfrench.com

As you can see both frameworks have students acknowledge what topic or subject they are learning and slowly move through a process to have students actively engage in the learning and extend and refine their understanding of the topic to produce an high quality of work.  

The possible ways to apply these two frameworks in an learning environment is infinite, with them lending themselves to almost any topic or subject imaginable. In regards to ICT or eLearning these frameworks are ideal for helping students develop skills to use different technologies and also provide them with a process to be able to develop skills in future studies, helping them to move and adapt with the advances in technology.

Warm Regards,

Jess Esmond

<廼ડ> ATHERTON J S (2010) Learning and Teaching; Bloom's taxonomy [On-line] UK: Available: http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/bloomtax.htm Accessed: 10 November 2010

 Mike Eisenberg and Bob Berkowitz 2001 "Big6 Skills Overview". Accessed: http://www.big6.com/2001/11/19/a-big6™-skills-overview/ on the 10/11/10. References and Acknowledgments: