Reading Practice Intensive - Session Seven

 Session Seven - Thinking 

Giving our students opportunities for higher level thinking; 

Critical thinking is one of, if not the most important element for our students to learn as they move into the real world - the ability to be discerning, and attentive to the content they are being bombarded with on a daily basis in the digital world. Moving beyond passively accepting the texts, and towards examining, evaluating, analysing, and critiquing the validity and credibility of what they are being presented with.

Thinking Frames 

All of these concepts are based on the idea that as we think more deeply about the texts we read, our thought processes become more abstract, and require some synthesising, and analysing multiple pieces of information, both from the text, and prior knowledge, in order to make sense of the more complex ideas in the text.

Analysis: Deconstructing by looking closely at the parts (language features) of the texts (i.e character’s actions, authors purpose, structure of the text, PAILS)

An example of one of the ways I can implement this in my own practice is the use of digital tools to annotate and highlight key parts of a text that relate to the language features we are examining - we think about the idea of zooming in (looking at specific parts/phrases/words) or zooming out (making connections between separate parts of the text)

Learners need planned, ongoing opportunities to understand and appreciate how language features are used for effect within, and across texts.

I have often referred back to an acronym that we used a lot when I was studying to be a teacher; PAILS (purpose, audience, ideas, language, and structure), and when we teach students a text it is easy to focus on the ideas, and the language, however it is critically important for us to be aware, as teachers, that some of the other features are not always apparent to our learners (i.e how structuring a piece of writing can accentuate which ideas are most important, or how a seemingly simple narrative can have underlying ideas that are only present when we consider the purpose the author had for writing the text)

By examining the language and structure of a text we open our eyes to a wider world in which a text does not exist in isolation, but rather is a reflection of the author, and the world that we live in; taking into consideration the biases, and underlying influences that go into each text that we read.

Critical Literacy

“A critical literate person is able to examine the power relationships inherent in language use, to recognize that language is not neutral and to confront their own values in the production and reception of language” (Luke, 2012).

In order to get our learners thinking more critically it is important to provide them with provocations that generate conversation, and discussion. It is important while we do this to take into account that provocations can inspire emotional responses and reactions from the learners, and while this is important, it is also important for us to create a safe space where they can share their ideas, not entirely free from judgment, but where they can discuss/argue about the topic, or idea in the provocation without directing it at each other.

We were asked to use the text that we brought (No Girls Allowed SLJ3) in order to create a provocation for our learners to discuss; one that challenges a Critical Literacy theme (ageism,, cultural differences, gender bias etc.), and to create a “counter-narrative” writing activity that reframes the situation in our text to challenge the idea. I came up with the ones below;

Provocation: “Do girls need to be protected more than boys?”

Counter-NarrativeWrite an extra passage in the story; the organisers of the tournament are scared of how good Riley is, and want to find a way to stop her from playing and showing up the boys.

Sythesising

When taught how to synthesise through multi-text reading, readers come to understand the importance of weighing up information and perspectives from different sources (including their own). This is why it is important for us to use multiple texts which focus on a larger theme or idea. Nothing exists in isolation, and so our ability to draw on multiple sources of information allows us to form more well-reasoned, and well-rounded points of view on the idea.

In summary - this session has been probably the one with content most familiar to me; critical thinking, and information literacy is a throwback to a lot of what we taught as English teachers in secondary school. It is really interesting finding, and identifying some of the issues that we can discuss with our students at a primary level,  as far as Critical Literacy goes, are relevant to our students, and other which I had not considered useable at this age level.

This term we are focusing a lot on perspective - both the characters in the narrative, and the authors' purpose, and a lot of the content this week is going to challenge me to approach these texts in a variety of different ways.

Addendum:

I believe this level of analysis is of critical importance as young people these days are more and more influenced by the "texts" that they are exposed to, whether that be visual texts like TikTok videos or the ads that bombard them every couple of seconds while watching their favourite steamer, or the dialogue in video games they play. These are all texts that require us to examine and analyse them with a critical eye, and if we are ignorant of these things then we can easily be taken for fools.