Bloom's Taxonomy, originally created in the 1950s, had six levels: "Knowledge," "Comprehension," "Application," "Analysis," "Synthesis" and "Evaluation." During the 1990s, a former student of Bloom revised the category names. The new names are "Remembering," "Understanding," "Applying," "Analyzing," "Evaluating" and "Creating."
Educators who apply Bloom's Taxonomy to teaching and testing use learning objectives and test questions to help their students advance. Teachers initially ask questions that require basic reasoning skills and progress to more complex ones. Questions generally begin with asking students to recall specific information they are being taught. As students progress and are able to recall learned information accurately, teachers begin asking questions that require them to compare or contrast learned information, apply the information to generalized or other situations and evaluate the information learned.
The pyramid of levels in Bloom's Taxonomy can be a visual tool for monitoring learning. Both educators and students can enjoy charting progress using this model, monitoring learning at each level and rewarding progress. This can be an exciting way to learn, while also providing motivation and understanding for the increasing complexity of learning. Students who learn about Bloom's Taxonomy, learn about their own cognitive functions and better understand their own ability to learn.
Make games that include the classification levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Games that consist of questions and answers work well, particularly ones that have difficulty levels. For example, play a game with students on a subject where students earn points for answering questions correctly. Assign a point value for each question based on its complexity, as determined by Bloom's Taxonomy. Assign 100 points to questions that test students on recall of material, 200 points for questions that require students to show an understanding of the material and 300 points for ones that require them to analyze material.