Inquiry-based practices expect students to question, reflect, and respond to their inquiries. Research skills are required to effectively answer questions. However, in today’s digital world, with unlimited and instant access to videos, live streams, social media, and news reports, students are bombarded with information. Knowing how to disseminate information, comprehend it, and then assess its merit and verity require the use of critical literacy and thinking skills (Rini, 2018). Critical literacy skills must begin at the elementary level and, “…be built up by consistently familiarizing students with literacy”, with lessons tailored to students developmental levels (Rini, 2018).
Theme 3 examined the content and characteristics of reference sources. Teaching effective use of online reference tools is one of the mandates of a TL, and to, “act as a teacher and instructional partner” (Oberg, 2017). Collaborating with teachers to assist in their delivery of inquiry-based lessons fits naturally with being an information specialist and can aide in developing critical literacy skills in young learners.
Allan Luke describes critical literacy as, “…an attitude, a disposition of critical and constructive criticism towards texts” (Luke, 2015). For Luke, and other theorists, critical literacy is having the ability to, “work through text and then engage almost as critical social scientists in understanding how to get to facts” (Luke, 2015). Watch Luke’s video below for further insight.
(Luke, 2015).
TL’s, with classroom teachers, can create and teach critical literacy lessons that will build a mindset in students to identify bias, absent voices/perspectives, and distinguish between fact and fiction when using reference tools such as encyclopedias, biographies, and Wikipedia. Lessons below are categorized by grade levels. Keeping in mind the 4 dimensions of critical literacy (Image 1),
Image 1
students in K-4 will be introduced to critical literacy skills with Book Introductions, grs. 5-6 will use lessons from CBC Kids and Media Smarts, to learn how to disseminate news stories, and gr. 7 students will engage in evaluating and developing Wikipedia articles.
Book introductions encourage students to engage with texts in a critical way. In Labadie, et al’s article, they refer to the work of Louise Rosenblatt who suggests that teachers approach book introductions in, “… terms of a transactional theory of reading, in which each time a reader approaches a text, he or she brings a unique set of perspective and purposes to the text” (Labadie, Mosely Wetzel, & Rogers, 2012).
Themed non-fiction books such as Black History in North America – slavery and civil rights, as was the case in Labadie’s article (Labadie, Mosely Wetzel, & Rogers, 2012), would be used in a read aloud to generate questions and engage students in critical literacy discussions. “Purposeful prompts” are used to facilitate deep, reflective thinking [side bar] (Labadie, Mosely Wetzel, & Rogers, 2012).
When this foundation is set it leads to further work in the intermediate grades.
Gr.5-6 students will engage in Fake News/Verifying News Stories through videos and lessons provided through CBC Kids & Media Smarts.
The Fact vs. Fake: A Quick Lesson in Media Literacy video will introduce students to the phenomenon of false news. Students can then participate in the online quiz to use their critical & digital literacy skills to disseminate information.
(CBC Kids Team, 2022).
Researching with tools such as encyclopedias and Wikipedia, must be done using critical literacy skills. Students from elementary through to post-secondary rely heavily on search engines such as Google rather than a library database, or the Focused Education BC Digital Classroom index to conduct their research inquiries due to its ease of access, readability, and speed (Lopez-Fitzsimmons & Nagra, 2019).
Wikipedia is the top result in most Google searches and many students rely on the data found in its articles. However, this platform has an, “…uneven geographic, historical, and cultural representation; there are well-known information gaps related to women, gender, and sexual identity; … the majority of Wikipedia editors are white, Western, men” (Park & Bridges, 2022).
Rather than teaching students not to use Wikipedia, the approach I recommend is to bring the issues of bias, equity, perspective, censorship, and representation to gr. 7 students. WikiEdu modules would be used to inform students on these issues and have them learn about the responsibilities of accuracy, perspective, and equity when publishing online. Lessons would include topics on: thinking about Wikipedia as a source of information, evaluating articles and sources, what’s a contact gap?, finding your article; sandboxes, talk pages, & watchlists, and plagiarism.
Through collaboration with teachers, TL’s can play an important role in helping students to develop important critical literacy skills. These skills will help students to evolve into proficient 21st century literate citizens.
Your theme post has been thoughtfully compiled and I learned things from it. I did not know that the majority of wikipedia editors were white western males. This is a huge issue with representation of information. I will incorporate this fact in my own lessons about wikipedia, thank you!
Hi Linette,
I thoroughly enjoyed your post, and the various resources and videos you shared. Luke had so many interesting perspectives to share on this topic. I especially connected with making sure that our aim as educators is to inspire curiosity and skepticism about what they read, but not to go too far down the fake news hole as to make students think that they can’t trust anything on the internet, and that nothing is real.
I appreciate how you broke down your plan to address how you would introduce critical literacy at each of the different grades and the tools you would use. It is often harder to find good resources for the younger grades on this topic but MediaSmarts and CBC Kids both have a fair bit to offer. The video you shared from CBC Kids was great, and I think kids would find it engaging and funny.