Stephanie Donovan

12 , 2016

July

th

Dr. Corrie Burdick

SPED 640
Article 2: Discussion Board Post

The article that I read was, Taking on Critical Literacy: The Journey of
Newcomers and Novices by, Mitzi Lewison, Amy Seely Flint, and Katie Van Sluys.
This article really gives a smooth breakdown of what critical literacy is and even
gives examples of how to use it in your classroom. Right from the start, we are
introduced to how this article is going to breakdown critical literacy and the steps
that need to be implemented together in order for critical literacy to occur in the
classroom, which then leads us into examples in the classroom given through
newcomers to critical literacy and novices of critical literacy.
What I took from this article was that critical literacy includes four major
components that each need to be taught together in order for your classroom to be
considered using the critical literacy approach. Students need to be interrogating
the text that they are reading by using different strategies to really pull it a part.
After that, they need to be looking and accepting the multiple viewpoints that this
reading may bring. From there, they need to look into any political issues that may
be presented from that article and there needs to be a discussion as to what those
issues are. To complete the critical literacy process, students need to take control of
that reading and really transform it to make it more culture friendly and to extend
the boarders of cultural beliefs.
The article provides many great examples to help better understand critical
literacy and how it would look in the classroom. Nancys example really spoke to me
because she is a 5th grade teacher, which happens to be a grade that I work with. It
was not until I read Nancys example that I even thought it was possible to use
critical literacy in elementary schools. Nancys way of going about this critical lens
was through giving her students a task to focus on while they were completing their
reading. The students would participate in literature discussions after reading and if
they had a focus, it would make for stronger discussions and an understanding of
the expectations. These discussions would lead to contradicting viewpoints,
creating a stronger discussion on political issues and then ending with ways to
transform the cultural beliefs from the texts point-of-view.
Overall, I found this article extremely helpful. It truly helped broaden my
understanding of what critical literacy means and it even gave some great
examples at different age levels of ways to incorporate it into your own classroom. I
definitely recommend reading this article!