Critical literacy

Critical literacy is a contentious issue because it creates debate and politicises the classroom. However the literature children are reading is not without its own political agenda. We feel that by giving children the skills they need to analyse the texts they encounter then they will be empowered to make their own judgements and be better informed. Critical literacy skills enable children to analyse the power of the language and understand where texts are coming from and why they are there.

Critical literacy is very relevant and must be addressed in the classroom with today's children who are growing up in a multimodal society.

History of English!!!!*?@)!!!!

Hi everyone, hope you enjoy looking at our blog.
Are you all feeling as confused, worried, anxious
and frightened as we are writing our essays for Phil.
At least we've already got grey hairs, but this essay
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Alison xxx

Reading Path Activity

The website we visited is called www.mbgnet.net/ it is a bold, colourful and multimodal site with links to other interesting sites. We charted our path around the site and then looked at where it led us. We decided that the logic behind our path was based on our interest. We had an interest/question about the topic of rainforests and we navigated a path around the website which naturally followed our questions/interests. We could navigate back to main and sub menus or choose to investigate a new topic. During our journey around the site we took the opportunity to link to other sites. E.g. When looking at the ‘rainforest animals’ page, we linked to ‘multimedia animals encyclopaedia’. When looking at plants in the rainforest, we linked to ‘biology of plants’ website.

We felt that this type of multimodal text would have implications on our teaching – in that, historically, children were taught to read from left to right. Text was always in sentences and was deliberately clear and uncluttered. Multimodal forms of text do not require children to start on the left and it is acceptable for texts to be busy, as the user can return to the page and investigate text in any order.
Although we felt children still needed to be able to decode words they also need to be able to recognise and understand signs, symbols and pictures. We thought that a child would need to know how to return to a text and how to keep track of their path in order to navigate around this type of text. Text level work would need to incorporate multimodal forms of communication, not just written text. The importance of choices would need to be taught i.e. Font-size, colour, pictures etc. So that children can understand and use texts as a form of communication.

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