How would you support critical literacy in the classroom?
Provide examples on what this would look like and how you would ensure that
students are actively engaged and developing the necessary skills. Please think
about cross curricular approaches.
From my understanding, "critical literacy" is any type of stimulus that fosters critical thinking as well as grit. Texts, graphics, advertisements-anything that can make a student question or second guess an idea. To begin, I want to say that the "Reading Culture" course I took at Lakehead in my second or third year, was amazing for introducing critical literary (Monica Flegel's Class). It was all literature, but the way that it was structured "Reading Culture", I think speaks with great definition to what critical literacy is mean't to be.
In my class I am supporting Critical Literacy through many different faucets. My most recent was an experimental form of storytelling called "Lawyer Stories" in which students are not only participating in the activity as participants but also developing their own "Lawyer Story".
I have attached a link to the Lawyer Stories Wattpad edition that I had put together. If you like it and want a more indepth copy-I have the anthology available on TPT. I will be releasing a Creative Writing unit in which I am incorporating the basic deconstruction of a story as well as the construction of a "Lawyer Story" which scaffolds into a published writing piece by the student.
The reason I say the "Lawyer Stories" are pretty much the epitome of Critical Literacy is because they do not only require students to question the fundamental elements of a story, but because it requires student to deduce the connections between successful questions. Yes, I intentionally didn't explain the ideas of the Lawyer stories because I wrote about them in the forward of the wattpad edition. See the link below.
https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/38198766-lawyer-stories
In the past I have used resources that raise questions for students about the things they believe or are told. I have used "LGBTQ" as a topic to help get students critically thinking and communicating to investigate if it really is unacceptable to identify as such in China. Living and working in China, this has proven very useful and could be applied in Canada as well to communities that need outreach but are not willing to look at it introspectively yet.
Having the students look at a topic in society that may get scrutiny or is perceived as unwelcome by society as a whole is a huge step in developing critical thinking, making me believe that sometimes to identify critical literacy, it is as simple as choosing a topic that begins with a question raised.
If you like, you can download my bundled resource for Grade 11 English. Cross Curricular Unit of Social Justice and English Language Arts.
This unit is a comprehensive investigation of LGBTQ's growing acceptance in China that goes along with various writing skills and critical thinking activities in which students need to represent research in different ways.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Social-Justice-English-11-Cross-Curricular-Unit-3533812
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