Critical Literacy

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Critical Literacy

• Brigitte Heimbueger
• December 2005

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What is Critical Literacy?

• It provides students with the opportunity to look
  critically at literature and question what the
  are reading.
• Students can become empowered to take on,
  discuss, and question such issues as social
  justice and equality.

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What is Critical Literacy?

• Critical Literacy helps teachers and students
  expand their reasoning, seek out multiple
  perspectives, and become active thinkers,
• (McLaughlin DeVoogd, 2004, p.52).

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Classroom Practices

• Question literature from varying perspectives
  (such as The Three Little Pigs and The True Story
  of the Three Little Pigs. (Henry, 2005)
• Students can begin by discussing personal
  experience, have you ever felt as though you
  were being left out or ignored? Then you can
  introduce a text which may further students
  thoughts and ideas. (Ciardiello, 2004, p.143)

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Critical Inquiry Components
Ciardiello (2004) provides this model for
critical inquiry. He then went through each
section and provided possible classroom
applications. (139) He also offers a variety of
texts as resources for teachers use in the
classroom.
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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

• Educators traditionally have attempted to
  insert culture into the education, instead of
  inserting education into the culture
• (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p.159)
• Students must come first in our classrooms. We
  need to consider the knowledge and experience
  that our students bring along with them into the
  school community. We need to create a strong
  bridge between the school and home communities.

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Future Implications

• I plan to implement critical literacy into my
  classroom alongside other literacy teaching
  models.
• Critical literacy is something that I need to
  practice with because I have not had personal
  experience with it.
• Critical literacy is both empowering and powerful!

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Fishing Day By Andrea Davis Pinkney

• Listen while I read a section of this story.
• Think about what questions you may have or your
  students might have about what is occurring in
  the story and the perspective from which the
  author writes.

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What can we do

• Let us work together to empower students.
• Let us strive to use our position as educators to
  open eyes wide to the possibilities that lie in
  education

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Thank you for listening!

• Good Luck with all of your future endeavors!