I love to read! 📚 💻 🎦 I am an avid reader! I am a voracious reader! Ok, maybe not voracious…but certainly I love to read. 😊 Therefore, I imagine you have been waiting with bated breath for the next in my “Must Read” list. A reminder that this list was generously provided by experienced scholars and practitioners in the field of literacy.
The paper I would like to share in this post is entitled "Apprenticing students into political participation: using critical visual literacy to review and redesign the school website." by Elizabeth Baker, Beryl Exley, Linda-Dianne Willis and Dr Lisbeth Kitson. This paper examines how one visiting teacher-researcher worked with primary age students to enhance their visual critical literacy. More specifically, this teaching process was undertaken when students were reviewing and redesigning their school website.
We live in a multimodal, digital, and virtual world where the skills and knowledge that we use for traditional reading and writing of print-based texts is important but not sufficient. Have you ever considered how we can equip our young learners with the critical skills they need to navigate and shape the media-rich world around them? 🌍💡
In past weeks I have been able to see firsthand the influence of contemporary texts on primary age children when there is an absence of critical visual literacy. 🎨👀 It has not been a comfortable experience as an educator and as a grandparent! 😨
Here are my take aways...
- It is imperative that we equip our students with the tools they need to navigate, question, and reshape the multimodal, digital and virtual worlds they inhabit.
- Young students are very capable and are able to learn how to critically examine the social interests and power structures embedded in texts (age-appropriate political participation).
- A pedagogy of inquiry, combined with visual grammar tools, can empower even our youngest learners to engage with complex texts and social constructions. 💪📜
- A high level of teacher knowledge is required for a responsive functional grammar pedagogy and for apprenticing students into political participation.
and possibilities for what I might do…
- Apprentice (take small steps) students into political participation by teaching them to actively think about the choices authors make, and don’t make, when creating texts.
- Explore and develop a language with students for critical visual literacy using real-world and relevant texts.
- Use functional grammar concepts to point to contextual meanings and how these are potentially differentially expressed and received.
- Review, reflect and refine the way we support teachers to incorporate visual grammar and critical literacy into our primary classrooms.
My wondering ❓
Educators do you feel equipped with the knowledge and skills to do this work?
If you would like to read this paper it can be found here https://lnkd.in/g796eefE
Former sped bus assistant at Virginia Beach City Public Schools
4wCongrats to my city! 👍