Bloom's Taxonomy
and Media Literacy

Benjamin Bloom created a taxonomy for categorizing critical questions that are commonly the basis of most education curricula. Utilizing the six competencies of critical thinking, providing media education curriculum in the classroom incorporates the following skills:

Competence	Skills Demonstrated	Sample Question
Knowledge	Knowledge of major idea: media literacy Ability to list, define, describe, examine, identify, name	Who is communicating?
Comprehension	Understanding information, grasping meaning Ability to interpret facts, compare, contrast, summarize, distinguish, estimate, discuss	Why are they promoting the message?
Application	Use methods, concepts, theories in new situations Ability to apply, demonstrate, classify	Who owns, profits from, and pays for media messages? How are messages communicated?
Analysis	Seeing patterns, recognition of hidden meanings Ability to analyze, order, explain, connect, arrange, infer	What is NOT being said and why?
Synthesis	Relate knowledge from several disciplines Ability to predict, draw conclusions, combine, integrate, modify, rearrange, substitute, plan, create, design, invest, ask "What if?", formulate, prepare, generalize, rewrite	Who receives media messages and what sense is made of them?
Evaluation	Compare and discriminate between ideas, assess value of theories, presentations, make choices based on reasoned argument Ability to assess, decide, select, judge, support, conclude, discriminate, summarize	Is there consistency both within and across media?