Bloom's Taxonomy Question Stems: A Free, Printable Bank
A complete bank of Bloom's Taxonomy question stems for every level — Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create — with classroom-ready examples.
Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchy of cognitive skills, originally published by Benjamin Bloom in 1956 and revised by Anderson and Krathwohl in 2001. The revised six levels — Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create — give teachers a shared language for designing questions at the level of thinking they actually want to assess. Below is a stem bank you can keep open while writing assessments, plus examples at each level.
Level 1 — Remember
Recall facts and basic concepts. Lowest cognitive demand; useful for vocabulary, dates, and procedures.
- What is the definition of ___?
- List the steps of ___.
- Identify the ___ in this diagram.
- When did ___ occur?
Level 2 — Understand
Explain ideas or concepts. Demonstrates comprehension beyond recall.
- Summarize ___ in your own words.
- Explain why ___ happens.
- What is the main idea of ___?
- Give an example of ___.
Level 3 — Apply
Use information in a new situation. Transfer of skill to an unfamiliar context.
- How would you use ___ to solve ___?
- Demonstrate how ___ works in a new context.
- Calculate ___ using the formula ___.
- Apply the rule ___ to the following case.
Level 4 — Analyze
Break down ideas, identify relationships, distinguish parts. The level where misconceptions surface.
- Compare and contrast ___ and ___.
- What evidence supports the author's claim that ___?
- What is the relationship between ___ and ___?
- Categorize the following into ___ groups.
Level 5 — Evaluate
Justify a position or judge value. Defends a claim with reasoning and evidence.
- Do you agree with ___? Defend your position.
- Which approach is most effective and why?
- Critique the argument that ___.
- Rank these solutions from most to least effective. Justify.
Level 6 — Create
Produce new or original work. Highest cognitive demand; assesses synthesis and innovation.
- Design an experiment to test ___.
- Write an original ___ that demonstrates ___.
- Propose a solution to ___.
- Construct a model that explains ___.
How to use this in your week
A common pitfall is writing assessments that only sit at levels 1–2 because they're easiest to write and grade. A healthy unit assessment usually mixes levels: roughly 30% Remember/Understand, 40% Apply, 20% Analyze, and 10% Evaluate/Create. When you generate a quiz or exam in FoxFish, you can ask for items "at Bloom's level 4 or higher" in the extras box and the model will lean that way.
Printable version
Want this as a one-page printable for your binder? Generate it as a worksheet in FoxFish by pasting the stems above as a topic — it'll lay them out cleanly on a single page.