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Cognitive verbs in the Australian Curriculum

The cognitive verb overviews support teachers and school leaders in the explicit teaching of thinking. The overviews highlight the most common cognitive verbs used across learning areas in the Australian Curriculum.

The Australian Curriculum is designed to help all young Australians to become successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens. Cognitive verbs can be identified across each of the three dimensions of the Australian Curriculum, and signal to students the type of mental operations they are to use when demonstrating what they know, understand and can do. Cognitive verbs are categorised using Marzano & Kendall’s four levels of cognitive process: retrieval, comprehension, analysis and knowledge utilisation (2007).

The cognitive verb overviews provide a direct link to the Australian Curriculum learning areas/subjects and year levels. The cognitive verb toolkits have been developed to support teachers and school leaders in the explicit teaching of thinking.

Note: These cognitive verb overviews are for use with the P–10 Australian Curriculum. The cognitive verbs glossary for Year 11–12 students is available under the Teaching tab for each subject in the senior secondary section.
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