Barrett's Taxonomy - No, not Bloom's! A guide by Johnny Suttle

Johnny expertly writes: 

No! Not Bloom’s! I remember being in my NQT year and thinking ‘If I ever hear anyone mention ‘Blooms Taxonomy’ again I’m going to have a meltdown, swear at a student and never step foot in a school again. It seemed to be the refuge of anyone delivering CPD, not sure what to say – mention Bloom’s taxonomy. Want to impress an observer – say your lesson has been planned using principles from Bloom. This is not to say Bloom’s taxonomy is bad, in fact I think it’s really useful, I’m just sick to death of hearing about it! So…good news … I’m not writing about Bloom’s taxonomy, bad news…I’m going to write about a taxonomy by some bloke beginning with B!

What does it do? 

Barrett’s taxonomy is a fantastic formative assessment model that lets us understand how much information and to what degree of depth a student has understood a text. It is very easy to read an extended piece of writing with a class, or even a set of instructions and then simply make the assumption that they have understood that text and gained the same level of information you have. You then plough ahead with the next part of the lesson which is dependent on the comprehension of the text and lots of students are left behind, they can’t access the next step in the learning and the lessons consequently falls apart. 

Barrett’s Taxonomy allows you to phrase questions that give you an understanding of where exactly each student’s understanding of what you have just read is at. It recognises 5 levels at which a student can engage with a text. 

1. Literal Comprehension – Students can demonstrate recognition of the key details or main ideas that are explicitly stated in a text.
2. Reorganisation – Students can not only recognise the key ideas but can summarise them, or explain them in their own words.
3. Inferential – Students can use the ideas to make predictions, hypotheses, or drawn connections to other learning that links with the topic – i.e. if they’ve read an article about volcanoes they might be able to make a link to knowledge they have about the make-up of the earth.
4. Evaluation – Students are able to make a judgement about the validity of a text (is it a reliable source), They can make judgements about whether the text represent fact or opinion and they can compare external ideas to the ideas presented in the text.
5. Appreciation – Students can demonstrate their understanding of how the writer’s choice of language reflects their ideas and intentions. They are also able to identify and emphasise with individuals or characters within a text.

How can we use it? 

As hinge questions: Before you move onto a task about a text you can use questions from the taxonomy that allows you to judge if the students have a strong enough understanding to be able to tackle that task. If not you know you need to go back and spend more time breaking down the text. If for example I want to teach my students to write a paragraph about a text in which they make inferences they can only do this if they have understood it to an inferential level. By questioning up to this level I can make the judgement, can students respond at this level, if so we move on, if not we spend more time on the text. 

Taking students to the next level of comprehension: Questioning is a hugely important part of our teaching practice. When shown on a hierarchical level like this taxonomy it is really clear how we can use questioning to help our students push themselves to a deeper understanding. If we read a text I might pick on a student and ask them a question based at the literal comprehension level. If they answer this I can follow this up with a question at the reorganisation level. Students might need some help formulating an answer at a level at which they struggle but if we don’t allow them the option to opt out of answering we can guide them, one step of the pyramid at a time to a deeper understanding. 

Adding differentiation to our lessons: Picture this common scenario in many of our lessons. Students have just read a text and they then complete a few comprehension questions to demonstrate they have understood the text. It is all too easy to make these questions simple literal comprehension questions. For example, imagine they have just read a text about Henry VIII questions might look like this: 

1. Name three of his wives
2. What did he do to his second wife
3. How long did he rule for

These questions will us see if students have understood the text but they will not push the more able students who have a clear literal comprehension and are starting to formulate their own ideas of a text. Imagine instead you gave students the choice of tasks such as this: 

1. State 5 things you find out about Henry VIII 

2. Explain what Henry VIII did to his wives in your own words 

3. Why do you think Henry VIII beheaded Anne Boleyn 

4. How do you think people at the time would have viewed Henry VIII’s actions 

5. How do you think the author feels about Henry VIII and which sentence lets you know this. 

Students have the choice of which task they respond to. By simply circulating the room you can see who is responding to which task and therefore which level they have understood the text. You are able to encourage particular individuals to respond to a particular task that will challenge them. If they complete a task before others are finished they can attempt the next level of task. In terms of planning time this takes the same time as it does to come up with 5 comprehension tasks but the end result is a fully differentiated task that will challenge all students and allow you clear and instant feedback about all students in the class. 

Conclusion: I hate a taxonomy! In case I didn’t make it clear in the intro I feel a strong personal resentment to Benjamin Bloom. However the idea of tiered questioning is so useful. Going forward I think extended reading is going to become a key part of teaching in all subjects. As Alex Quigley says in his excellent book ‘Closing the Reading Gap’ “I would challenge every teacher to find out more about reading … It is imperative that we all confidently understand how children learn to read and go on the read to learn best.” Simply allocating more of our class time to silent reading is not enough. We need to teach and scaffold reading with skill in the classroom and Barrett’s taxonomy is a brilliant way to allow us to make an assessment of what levels of scaffolding we need to put in place.