Adapting Bloom's for formative assessment

Most of the time we talk about Bloom's taxonomy when considering students' summative assessments, but because I've been reading David A. Sousa's book Brain-Friendly Assessments I've also been thinking about how Bloom's can be applied for formative assessments.  Basically Bloom's taxonomy describes the complexity of human thought.  Teachers need to be aware when asking questions that they should be increasing complexity rather than difficulty to tap into the higher-levels of Blooms.

Here is the example given by Sousa:
Remember level:  Name the planets in the solar system
A more difficult question at the Remember level:  Name the planets in the solar system in order from the sun
Analysis and Evaluate level:  Was it necessary to downgrade Pluto to a dwarf planet? (Here a student has to understand and analyze the differences between a planet and a dwarf planet and evaluate whether it was necessary to downgrade.

Sousa also writes about the DOK model (Depth Of Knowledge) that combines the 6 levels of Bloom's into 4:

• Recall - basic knowledge - corresponds to Remembering and Understanding
• Basic application of skill/concept - corresponds to Applying
• Strategic thinking - requires research and synthesis - corresponds to Analysing and Evaluating
• Extended thinking - involves originally and innovation - corresponds to Creating

Studies show that engagement increases when students are asked to engage in higher-order thinking activities, as it "rescues" their brains from rote memorization, boredom and disengagement.

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