Table 3.

3 Mental Processes Associated With Each Level of the New Taxonomy

Level of Difficulty

Mental Processes

Verbs teachers often use when assigning goals and tasks

decide, what is the best way, select the best among the following alternatives solve, how would you overcome, adapt, develop a strategy to, figure out a way to, how will you reach your goal under these conditions experiment, generate and test, test the idea that, what would happen if, how would you test that, how would you determine if, how can this be explained, based on the experiment, what can be predicted investigate, research, find out about, take a position on, what are the differing features of, how did this happen, why did this happen, what would happen if categorize, compare and contrast, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, sort, create an analogy / metaphor classify, organize, sort, identify a broader category, identify different types identify errors, problems, issues, misunderstandings, assess, critique, diagnose, evaluate, edit, revise generalize, what conclusions can be drawn, what inferences can be made, create a generalization / principle / rule, trace the development of, form conclusions make and defend, predict, judge, deduce, what would have to happen, develop an argument for, under what conditions describe how or why, the key parts of, the effects, relationship between, paraphrase, summarize, explain ways in which illustrate, draw, show, use models, diagram, chart, depict, represent,
select / identify (from a list), determine describe, describe what / identify what, where when use, demonstrate, show, make, complete, draft

Level 4: Decision Making Knowledge Utilization Problem Solving Experimenting

Investigating Level 3: Analysis Matching Classifying Analyzing Errors Generalizing

Specifying Level 2: Comprehension Integrating Symbolizing Level 1: Retrieval Recognizing Recalling Executing

Robert J. Marzano Designing and Teaching Learning Goals and Objectives Classroom Strategies That Work 2009