1. Creating Space for Culturally Responsive and Critical Literacies

2. Essential Questions:
How can I support students’ deep learning of content and
practices through units of study?
How can I integrate literacy approaches into my language arts
units to deepen students’ learning?
What are critical and culturally responsive literacies and why/where/how might I find space for them in the curriculum?

3. 2 theoretical models of literacy learning….. (Street, 1984)
Autonomous Model of Literacy
set of decontextualized self- contained skills
teacher centered – “school- centric” reading and writing
sub-skills –learn about literacy as a subject
Product-oriented
pre-determined and easily measureable
Ideological Model of Literacy
context-dependent and embedded in sociocultural practices and situations
literacy is a social process – something we do to make sense of our lives
Process-focused with purpose and intentionality
there are multiple literacies using multiple texts depending on place, purpose and context

4. Halliday’s Plus Model Learning to use Language, Vasquez, (2010) p.16
Literacies are socially constructed & practiced
Learning language – meaning making processes
Learning about language – teaching the code & how texts work
Learning through language
Using reading & writing as tools
Learning to use language to critique
Question, transform thinking, take action
“Read the world”
Read aloud
Shared reading
Partner reading
Independent reading & writing
Alphabet
Comprehension strategies
Minilessons
Guided reading
Project based learning with social action
Discussion/Socratic circles
Reading the world as text and questioning the taken for granted
Dialogic writing
Text sets
Journals
Literature circles
Reading/writing workshop
Inquiry circles

5. Literacy is essentially social……..
Literacy is primarily something people do; it is an activity, located in the space between thought and text.
Literacy does not reside in people’s heads as a set of skills to be learned, and it does not just reside on paper captured as texts to be analyzed.
Like all human activity, literacy is essentially social, and it is located in the interaction between people (Barton & Hamilton, 1998, p. 3).
So… let’s make literacy learning: meaningful, culturally relevant, interesting, purposeful, and important enough for children to become passionately engaged in learning through literacies…….

6. What is Culturally Responsive Teaching?
“It is an approach that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes” -Gloria Ladson-Billings, (1994)

7. Constructivist pedagogy recognizes multiple cultural perspectives, and:
Connects children’s experiences and understandings from their lifeworlds to bridge with the content of the curriculum
Incorporates place-based and place-conscious concerns
Capitalizes on the funds of knowledge (cultural and linguistic resources) of children and their families
Draws from a range of instructional strategies, is inclusive of and differentiates for all learners
Respects and validates diversity

8. Characteristics of Culturally Responsive Teaching include:
Positive perspectives on parents and families using strength and asset-based beliefs and language
Teachers are facilitators who are aware of their own experiences, background, biases and cultural norms
Reshaping the curriculum using place, culture and knowledges of children and families
Student-centered instruction
Culturally-mediated instruction
Foster a sense of belonging
Sharing and validating cultures
The fact that I build a curriculum from their interests means that it becomes more likely that the work we do will have importance in their lives (Vasquez, 2017, p. 2).

9. Children need access to books that provide them with both mirrors and windows (Bishop, 1990).
When we see ourselves in stories we feel validated like we belong and we may just feel more empowered to gain courage to take on the obstacles in our lives.
Seeing others’ life experiences helps us to gain inspiration and become more empathetic towards diversity.

10. Children need access to books that provide them with both mirrors and windows (Bishop, 1990).
When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part. (Bishop, 1990, p. 557) ALL readers need to experience both books that are mirrors for their own lives and books that are windows to the lives of others.

11. What stories give us is an opportunity to wonder (Cunningham, 2015, p
Books are sometimes the only place where readers may meet people who are not like themselves, who offer alternative worldviews.
What readers may find is that when the lighting is just right, a window can also be a mirror (Bishop, 1990).
Literature can transform human experience and reflect it back to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own lives as part of the larger human experience.

12. Critical literacy….
… is the ability to actively read text in a manner that promotes a
deeper understanding of socially constructed concepts;
power,
inequality, and
injustice in human relationships.
Critical literacy invites readers to think deeply, question and transform their thinking about issues of social importance.
The development of critical literacy pushes students to question issues of power; in essence, to become thoughtful, active citizens..
Taking up critical literacy in the classroom is a way of living and learning….. It should lead to meaningful action on the part of learners.

13. Critical Thinking Competency
Critical thinking involves making judgments based on reasoning: students consider options; analyze these using specific criteria; and draw conclusions and make judgments.
Critical thinking competency encompasses a set of abilities that students use to examine their own thinking, and that of others, about information that they receive through observation, experience, and various forms of communication.
ThinkingCompetencyProfiles.pdf

14. Developing Critical Literacy with Children’s Literature
Using children’s literature to unpack social issues in the classroom community can create opportunities for critical conversations and make available different social positionings for students as they engage with texts.
Social position considers how peers perceive each other as members of the learning community and as viable partners for specific literacy events.

16. Use Powerful Read-Alouds with Culturally Responsive and Critical Literacy Literature
-high quality books (social issues, multicultural literacy, history, place-based issues, & books without a happily
ever after schema)
-read aloud as a strategy to promote and trigger meaningful conversations in the classroom
-conversations that encourage children to think about social issues they experience in their worlds
-thought-provoking and powerful texts (books, images, multi-media) that ask to be held inside and lingered upon.

17. LINGERING WITH A BOOK, Vasquez, 2010, p. 56
Learning Wall
-Select a picture from the book
That best reminds
us of what the
book has
taught us
Connecting to self and others through writing
To reflect,
Take action,
Convince,
Explain,
Question
Small group discussions based on collated responses and questions
TALKING CHIPS
Responding to questions – whole group, partners in writing
Read Aloud – Listening to the words and thinking about the story
Picture Walk
Experiencing the story through the illustrations
Partner and Whole Group Discussion
LINGERING WITH A BOOK, Vasquez, 2010, p. 56
Engaged, guided, extended, & reflective thinking……

18. Why Critical Literacy?
It is not sufficient to simply create texts for the sake of practicing a skill
The practice of using language in powerful ways to get things done in the world,
To enhance everyday life in schools and communities
To question practices of privilege and injustice
To create opportunities for critical conversations as students engage with texts
It’s part of the new core competencies in the BC Curriculum……

19. The ability to sound out words and make meaning from texts makes children good consumers rather than good citizens.
To be truly literate, children need to understand how text works and that they as literate beings have options in terms of how they are going to respond to a particular text in a given setting (Egawa & Harste, 2001).