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Creating Critical Classrooms

K-8 Reading and Writing With an Edge

• By Mitzi Lewison, Christine Leland, Jerome Harste

• Price: $39.95
• Binding: Paperback
• Pages: 392
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 12th September 2007
• ISBN: 978-0-8058-6231-7

About the Book

This book for elementary and middle school teachers and literacy methods courses articulates a powerful theory of critical literacy instruction. Critical literacy practices encourage students to use language to question the everyday world, interrogate the relationship between language and power, analyze popular culture and media, understand how power relationships are socially constructed, and consider actions that can be taken to promote social justice. By providing both a model for critical literacy instruction and many examples of how critical practices can be enacted in daily school life in elementary and middle school classrooms, Creating Critical Classrooms meets a huge need for a practical, theoretically based text on this topic.

Each chapter in the first section of the book elaborates a different aspect of the critical literacy model.
*Vignettes. Each chapter begins with a vignette written by a teacher researcher. The vignette highlights an example of how the model of critical literacy instruction works in real life.
*Theories that inform practice. After each vignette the authors present the theories they see as informing the classroom practice of the teacher-researcher featured in the vignette. These theories make explicit the assumptions that guided the choices the teacher made with students and also provide insight into the underlying beliefs that this teacher associated with enacting a critical literacy curriculum.
*Critical literacy chart. A chart in each chapter reviews the classroom vignette and explicates which cultural resources were drawn upon, what critical social practices were enacted, and how the teacher took up a critical stance.
*Map showing movement between the personal and the social. Each chapter includes a map showing the ways the teacher helped students move between the personal and the social.
*Thought Pieces. In an essay in each chapter related to its theme, Jerome Harste urges readers to step back and interrogate everyday assumptions about teaching and learning.
*Invitations for Disruption. These mini-inquiries designed for teachers are related to the theories that teacher researchers employed in each vignette and also are related to the thought pieces. They can be done alone or with a colleague, and also provide interesting topics for study groups or classes to pursue.

The second section of the book offers a series of Invitations for Students. These can be used in conjunction with a particular aspect of the model of critical literacy instruction or with any other part of a teacher’s curriculum. Each invitation is based on a particular social issue such as name-calling or consumerism and consists of a rationale, needed materials, and how to get started. Invitations are written with a whole-class focus and are followed by a learning center extension, designed for groups of students to do on their own. Readers are invited to think of these invitations as springboards to their own engagements or as organic entities that can grow and change based on the needs of their class.

The book closes with a rich bibliography: Classroom Resources: An Annotated List of Picture Books, Chapter Books, Videos, Songs, and Websites.

Table of Contents

Contents: L. Christensen, Foreword. Introduction. Overview: Why Do We Need a Theory of Critical Literacy? Personal & Cultural Resources: Using Life Experiences as an Entrée Into Critical Literacy. Cultural Resources: Using Popular Culture to Promote Critical Practice. Cultural Resources: Using Children’s Literature to Get Started With Critical Literacy. Critical Social Practices: Disrupting the Commonplace Through Critical Language Study. Critical Social Practices: Interrogating Multiple Viewpoints. Critical Social Practices: Focusing on the Sociopolitical. Critical Social Practices: Taking Social Action. Taking a Critical Stance: Outgrowing Ourselves. Invitations for Students. Classroom Resources: An Annotated List of Picture Books, Chapter Books, Videos, Songs, and Websites
References.

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