Let’s Get Critical!

I have discovered my new favorite literacy workshop: Critical Literacy!! The idea of critical literacy is to read between the lines, to look for alternative points-of-view, to identify who is left out of text, to consider multiple perspectives; that kind of reading generates controversy and controversy engenders engagement and engagement raises the learning curve and the achievement bar!

A good article on the subject by Maureen McLaughlin and Glenn DeVoogd can be found in IRA’s Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy 48:1, September 2004 and an effective lesson on the subject is available at ReadWriteThink: Critical Literacy and Women in the 19th Century. Another website that has both information and lessons comes from Tasmania, The English Learning Area. And finally, a more academic article: “A Tale of Differences: Comparing the Traditions, Perspectives, and Educational Goals of Critical Reading and Critical Litercy” by Gina Cervetti, Michael Pardales, and James Damico.

I approach Critical Literacy is through a three-step process, moving from images, to engaging text and finally to content print materials. I suggest this method because words don’t get in the way…students are forced to make meaning with only visual clues…well, and of course, schema! That approach levels the playing field for students who are able to think and analyze beyond their reading levels. Most students and adults seem at greater ease when they are able to try out various meanings and points-of-view with images than they are with print text.

I start with a cartoon or caricature related to the content area or theme or lesson and get students to engage in careful and scrutinizing questions about the visual representation as the foundation of meaning making:

· Whose point-of-view is at work in the image?

· What emboldens an artist to portray this type of image?

· What does the artist expect others to see?

· How are expectations and actual responses different from one another?

Of course, this is not a complete list of questions…this is only fodder for kids to get started and begin to discuss who is left out of the joke or who is the brunt of the satire. Then the discussion goes on to why this happens and how or what we should do about it…political and social activism.

From there, I move to a print medium, but an engaging texts…a fractured fairytale like the True Story of the Three Little Pigs, a poem or short story that has a grabber at the end…if not the beginning. Get them using the same questioning strategy to explore print text: whose point-of-view is at work? How doe varying points-of-view change the story? Whose point-of-view is more valuable” Whose point-of-view is easier to hear or listen to? Why? Again, not an all inclusive list, but a start. An activity that extends that reading can be the creation of a new point-of-view…using the initial genre as a model or developing the new point-of-view in a new genre–use the poem to generate a fractured fairy-tale…

Finally, content text…and now the process is a skill or at least near skill and kids can begin to really question text and in their questioning make information knowledge…accessible and useable!

Wikipedia: a teaching resource

I am enhancing a workshop that I share with teachers on the classroom use of Wikipedia. Now, you may be surprised at this, but I still encounter teachers who don’t even know what Wikipedia is!! That is shocking, but I value these teachers because anyone who takes the time to attend a workshop on a topic they know nothing about clearly is a learner! I will also note that more and more, when I ask who allows Wikipedia to be used by students for early stage research, more and more teachers are raising their hands.

Anyway, the point is, I found a blog entitled Traffic Statistics for Wikipedia Articles that links to a site, Wikipedia Traffic Statistics, showing the top 500 Wikipedia articles and the number of visits to each of those site by year. From that site, you can visit the actual site…then I suggest you go to the discussion tab and click on that tab to see how reputable the site itself is. Of course, you will see sites that a teacher would never take a student to…however, there are some excellent sites on the list…like Speed of Light which is rated as a “featured” article in Wikipedia which means it has been “peer reviewed” by an editorial board and found to be reputable and even valuable to the field of physics in the accuracy and importance of the information offered.

There is much to learn about Wikipedia and there are many ways that all content areas could be using it to engage their students and increase learning!!! I have been giving a two-hour workshop on using Wikipedia to teach the skills of Critical Literacy. There is so much there, that my workshop will be expanding to a full day to incorporate reading comprehension, Critical Literacy and writing….mulitple literacies using emerging technology!!! I almost put this baby to bed before further investigation. If you are interested in Wikipedia, check this blog out, right here on WordPress: The Way Things Work. And then go to Larry Sanger’s (founder of Wikipedia) new online encyclopedia, Citizendium. The plot thickens and my curiousity is peaked!!