Critical literacy encourages children to read between the lines and ask questions when engaging with literature: Whose story is this? Who benefits from this story? Whose voices are not being heard?
This is a skill that we need to teach our students. They should be able to decode the text and beyond the text: what was the author's purpose for writing this text? What areas was the author successful and/or not successful?.
Use books by Native writers all year round
Teachers need to pose their values and reflect that in their teaching. In order for students to have better understanding of the Native American tribes' cultures students should be exposed to an array of books that provide them with information and allow them to critically think about the history. This should be the case for all marginalized communities. This also supports the idea that students should see their teachers as writers. Students can also become writers and share their experiments though different ways of writing.
English language arts provides a space for Black women and girls to express themselves or to find solace in the shared lived experiences of Black women and girls.
Creating culturally relevant classrooms is vital to creating a safe space for students to share their experiences and be able to make connections.
As students read, we laugh, cry, and create community, but we also teach and learn from each other. If I had to choose one strategy as the centerpiece of my teaching, it would be the read-around. It provides both the writing text for my classroom and the social text where our lives intersect and we deepen our connections and understandings across lines of race, class, gender, nationality, and sexual orientation.
This activity supports the sociocultural historical theory because the teacher provides students an opportunity from each other experiences and relate to meaningful topics of conversation.
o. I frame this unit by sharing a quote from the Pew Research Center (Kochhar & Fry, 2014): “The median wealth of White households is 13 times that of Black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households.” And then I ask, “How did this ‘gap’ happen?” I tell students that we are going to look at the housing history in Portland to help us understand those statistics
Christensen poses her lessons/units around the topic of gentrification. She selects this topic because it is impacting her students lives in several ways. The way poses her lesson makes it appealing to her students and this lesson provides students an opportunity to be civically involved. This section reminds of Pose, Wobble, Flow: how to be a culturally proactive teacher in literature.
“I didn’t realize that other people went through the same things we [African Americans] did.”
When teachers take the time know their students and select text that they can mirror themselves in they can engage in meaningful discussions as students as more likely to make connections and think beyond the text.
My students’ voices and lives didn’t need “housekeeping”; they didn’t need to be told to “hush.” They needed a teacher who could unleash their beauty on the page and their capacity to discuss and argue in the classroom.
This reminds me of the book The Vulnerable Heart of Teaching because in order for meaningful discussions to take place students need to feel that they are in safe space to share. The same applies with writing.
It celebrated what I always knew and believed—that young people love to write in many ways, for many purposes, and for many audiences.
What are some ways teachers can create this classroom community at the beginning of the school year and main it through out year while addressing CCSS standards?
Many of the young people I work with feel inept when writing for school.
The way teachers pose writing projects often lead students to writingcide (the loss of interest in writing) due to the standards they are trying to meet. What teachers should ask themselves is how can they foster student engagement, based on their students funds of knowledge, through writing in meaningful ways?
who was characterized by some of his teachers as a disengaged learner and a “struggling” writer,
How the teacher perceives the student has a great impact on student's performance. The teacher has the option to view their students assets and build from them to make them successful or view them from a deficit perspective and not help them grow.
r me, writing is like breathing. I need it to survive.” He went on to complete a degree in writing and to stage his first play i
What does the child mean by "writing is like breathing"? Why is writing very important to them?