Making Use of Knowledge and Comprehension Activities

Here’s Bloom’s Taxonomy:

• Level 1: Knowledge
• Level 2: Comprehension
• Level 3: Application
• Level 4: Analysis
• Level 5: Synthesis
• Level 6: Evaluation

We’re going to look at the first two levels.

I’ll share eight activities you can use in your lessons, four for knowledge and four for comprehension.

All of which are excellent tools to use near the start of lessons or new topics.

Helpful ways to start laying the foundations of mastery.

Knowledge Activity 1: List the Info

Ask learners to create a list of pieces of information connected to the topic.

This list could be of recalled information, or it could be new information you want learners to learn.

In the latter case, you should provide the resources such as textbooks or handouts from which learners can extract the information.

To help learners separate out pieces of information you might provide a series of headings under which lists can be made.

Alternatively, you might divide the class into groups, give each group a different area about which to make their lists and then bring everyone back together to share their findings.

The goal of this activity is to both familiarise learners with the key content and to get them creating scaffolds they can use later in the lesson.

The lists become a working memory aid learners can call on when doing more complex tasks like analysis and evaluation.

Knowledge Activity 2: Mind-Map the Topic

Ask learners to create mind-maps showing what they already know about a topic.

Mind-maps are useful because they allow learners to recall and visualise connections as well as separate pieces of information.

They are another example of how we can get learners creating their own scaffolds.

For example, learners might make a Macbeth mind-map and then use this as a thinking aid during a series of more challenging activities.

Or a group of younger learners might make a mind-map about magnetism and then use this as a visual aid while conducting and then writing up an experiment looking at the properties of magnets.

Spider diagrams, brainstorms and concept maps are variations on this theme.

Knowledge Activity 3: Prior Knowledge Chart

Ask learners to create a chart showing the information they know about the topic of study.

The design of the chart could be left to learners, or you could provide a pro-forma for them to use.

In the latter case, you can create something that will help learners to collate information in a way you think will be useful.

A nice benefit of charts is that learners can return to them over a series of lessons, on each occasion adding in new information they have learned.

This helps learners to see how their knowledge is developing, acts as a memory aid, and gives them a chance to make links and connections.

As with our other examples, this process also helps learner visualise their knowledge, encouraging a metacognitive engagement with it.

An added benefit for us as the teacher is that we can circulate through the class, look at learners’ charts, and use these to assess the extent of their knowledge about the topic.

Plus, we can easily spot and teach away from mistakes and misconceptions that we see.

Knowledge Activity 4: Summarise The Content

Ask learners to make a timeline, glossary, storyboard or other such summary of relevant information.

Timelines, glossaries and storyboards are examples of specific ordering devices through which we can sequence and record information with which we are familiar.

Different devices have different uses.

A timeline, for example, has greater relevance in history than in art, just as a glossary will probably be used more in psychology than in music (though it depends a little on the level at which the subject is being studied).

The point is that different ordering devices are more or less relevant for different subjects, age groups and areas of the curriculum.

Perhaps the best idea here is to plan the activity with purpose.

By this I mean that you should first consider what format of summary is going to be of most use to your learners, or most accessible, and then plan from there (rather than automatically asking them to do a glossary, say, simply because it’s the first thing that comes to mind).

Switching to Comprehension

We switch now to comprehension.

From knowledge to understanding.

Here are four illustrative activities, suitable for use across the curriculum and with different age groups.

Comprehension Activity 1: Serial Questioning

Set learners a series of questions about the knowledge they have developed.

These questions should focus on learners’ understanding, asking them to explain, demonstrate and illustrate that which they have come to know.

(Explain, demonstrate and illustrate are all synonyms for comprehension.

Bloom’s Taxonomy keywords that indicate the subtly different cognitive processes we can ask learners to pursue.

Here’s a full set of comprehension keywords for you:

Characterise, Classify, Complete, Describe, Discuss, Establish, Explain, Express, Identify, Illustrate, Recognise, Report, Relate, Sort, Translate.)

The aim is to give learners a chance to convey their understanding.

In the process they will refine it, this happening primarily as they think about what they know, how they know it and what it means to communicate this clearly.

Comprehension Activity 2: Translate What You Know

Ask learners to communicate their knowledge through a different medium or form.

Translation requires comprehension.

To take our understanding and put it into a different form, we must first have clarity over what we know.

Or, at least, that clarity will come through doing the activity itself.

For example, if learners have made a list of all the key facts about volcanoes (a knowledge task), you might then ask them to explain how volcanoes work through a diagram or through a voiceover script for a television documentary.

The process of translating information from one form to another helps learners to develop their understanding.

It also challenges them to take the various pieces of information they know and put them together into some sort of whole, with this whole (the diagram or script in our example) being the vehicle they use to communicate their understanding.

Comprehension Activity 3: Can you say it yourself?

Ask learners to put the information about which they have learned into their own words.

This means learners must go beyond the simple recall involved in copying or writing out verbatim what has been remembered.

Instead, the pieces of information must be brought together into an explanation that is the learner’s own. That shows their understanding.

Some learners might struggle with this.

To help them, provide guidance in the form of success criteria, a paragraph structure, or give them a series of questions that they should answer in turn (with these answers together forming the summary you are seeking).

Doing this divides up the cognitive load, giving learners a better chance of focussing their working memory on the acts of ordering and then expressing their thoughts.

Comprehension Activity 4: Flowchart Demonstration

If learners have been learning about a process or a series of events, ask them to produce a flowchart demonstrating the nature of this.

Here, learners must separate out and order the different pieces of information they have learned.

Doing this helps them to better understand the process or sequence.

They will then be able to communicate this understanding through their flowchart.

You can press for further comprehension by asking learners to annotate their flowcharts with explanations of specific points as well as the relationships between things (such as how one thing causes another).

In some cases, you might want to provide learners with a pro-forma to fill in. A sheet that already contains the outline of the flow-chart.

In other cases, you might leave it up to learners to decide on the layout.

(Mini-whiteboards are often useful here as a testing ground in which learners can experiment with different flowchart designs.)