This week was about critical literacy and learning alternative ways to not only teach, but assess a class as well. This post was about my understanding before and after the required reading, including what it looked like and some of the challenges and benefits.
Reflection Post
Created December 2, 2017 by Amanda Johnson
Prior to the reading and other information shared throughout this week, I knew very little of what critical literacy actually was. I took it for it's name and thought it only had to do with those critical skills needed in order to be literate and have comprehension of what was being read. After reading the articles and watching the video I understand that it is so much more than that. It is regarding the instructional approaches that can be used to implement teaching literacy skills to students. There is a model that educators can use to help teach students that literacy is not simply reading, but analyzing and really putting in thought to what is being read.
Dr. Allan Luke explained the model for critical literacy. This model included four component: code breaker, text participant, text user, and text analysis and critic. The four resources are various practices that ensure students are, in a sense, moving up to the more complex levels as they begin to not only comprehend, but participate in the process and can begin to more critically examine what they are reading and writing. It is not just learning how to repeat and copy things down, but think for themselves about the texts.
As with implementing almost all new educational practices, there are challenges and benefits. The challenges may be that it can be difficult for the younger classes to understand how to put a lot of the critical literacy skills in to practice. We often look at examining text and believe that is for older grades, but we can teach younger children to examine what they are learning, but it could be time consuming. Children that have not learned to read on their own, will need the processes completely guided out for them and a lot of practice before they are able to complete such tasks on their own. The benefit of that, is that students will gradually learn to do that on their own and look deeper in to a text than just reading the words.
Incorporating critical literacy in my classroom could be done with our weekly anchor texts for our language arts lessons. We could delve deeper in to the writing and ask more critical questions about the text, what the author may have been trying to convey, and if anything can be applied to their own lives. Critical literacy can be taught, regardless of the curriculum model we are being told to teach. We are responsible for the pedagogical standards and strategies for our own classroom to work with the texts.
Prior to the reading and other information shared throughout this week, I knew very little of what critical literacy actually was. I took it for it's name and thought it only had to do with those critical skills needed in order to be literate and have comprehension of what was being read. After reading the articles and watching the video I understand that it is so much more than that. It is regarding the instructional approaches that can be used to implement teaching literacy skills to students. There is a model that educators can use to help teach students that literacy is not simply reading, but analyzing and really putting in thought to what is being read.
Dr. Allan Luke explained the model for critical literacy. This model included four component: code breaker, text participant, text user, and text analysis and critic. The four resources are various practices that ensure students are, in a sense, moving up to the more complex levels as they begin to not only comprehend, but participate in the process and can begin to more critically examine what they are reading and writing. It is not just learning how to repeat and copy things down, but think for themselves about the texts.
As with implementing almost all new educational practices, there are challenges and benefits. The challenges may be that it can be difficult for the younger classes to understand how to put a lot of the critical literacy skills in to practice. We often look at examining text and believe that is for older grades, but we can teach younger children to examine what they are learning, but it could be time consuming. Children that have not learned to read on their own, will need the processes completely guided out for them and a lot of practice before they are able to complete such tasks on their own. The benefit of that, is that students will gradually learn to do that on their own and look deeper in to a text than just reading the words.
Incorporating critical literacy in my classroom could be done with our weekly anchor texts for our language arts lessons. We could delve deeper in to the writing and ask more critical questions about the text, what the author may have been trying to convey, and if anything can be applied to their own lives. Critical literacy can be taught, regardless of the curriculum model we are being told to teach. We are responsible for the pedagogical standards and strategies for our own classroom to work with the texts.
Peer Responses
You make an important observation Amanda, when you speak of students being able to think for themselves about the text. To me, it's about meaning comprehension and meaning making. The Park article mentions how understanding of some of the terms used in the article that is the subject of the exercise are repeatedly utilized in the discussions that follow, and that they become language resources that enable critical thinking, You also make a very good point about being selective regarding the content and vocabulary for critical literacy subjects.
Jalen Brown, December 2, 2017
Jalen Brown, December 2, 2017
I can't be sure, but I think you are the one who teaches kindergarten, right? As a preschool teacher, I agree that, though challenging because of literacy limits, teaching children early to look deeper at a story or song or piece of art can only benefit them in the years to come. I appreciated that a graph of Luke's model was included with this module and I think it can be an effective reminder of the components of critical literacy and even a way to explain critical literacy to the students themselves.
Gretchen Mocker-Schierloh, December 2, 2017
Gretchen Mocker-Schierloh, December 2, 2017
Required Reading
- Dίaz-Rico, L. (2013). Chapter 4. Performance-based learning and Chapter 15. Project-based learning and service learning. In Strategies for teaching English learners (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson.
- McDaniel, C. (2004). Critical literacy: A questioning stance and the possibility for change. The Reading Teacher, 57(5), pp. 472-481.
- Park, Y. (2011). Using news articles to build a critical literacy classroom in an EFL setting. TESOL Journal, 2(1), 24-51.
- Alvermann, D., & Phelps, S. (2002). Assessment of students. In Content reading and literacy: Succeeding in today's diverse classrooms. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
- Falk, B. (2000). Possibilities and problems of a standards-based approach: The good, the bad, and the ugly. In The heart of the matter: Using standards and assessment to learn. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
- Ayan, D. & Seferoglu, G. (2011). Using electronic portfolios to promote reflective thinking in language teacher education. Educational Studies, 37(5), 513-521.