Media Awareness website: http://media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/index.cfm
A colleague put me on to this website regarding the media and internet education. It has some excellent resources for teaching critical media literacy in the classroom. I especially liked the game young children could play where they design a cereal box using "5 gimmicks". The game is called "Co-Co's AdverSmarts" and can be found under the Educational Games tab on the left hand side of the page. The game is designed to recognize the marketing techniques used on commercial Web sites that target young children.
A follow up lesson to the game could be to have the children bring in cereal boxes from home and identify the gimmicks used on the boxes. They could then redesign the boxes in ways that promote nutrition instead of gimmicks, which could also be part of a health lesson as well as art and language arts.
Another great feature of the site is found when you click on "For Teachers" at the top of the page. It gives you links to other great resources and you can do a search for lessons by curriculum outcomes for your province.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Other Ideas?
Does anyone have any other ideas on how to incorporate critical literacy into the everyday activities of the primary classroom?
Critical literacy in a grade one classroom
What happens when grade one children are afforded opportunities in critical literacy activities and use technology to represent their learning in multimodal ways?
I am currently involved in a Teachers as Researchers project with the Department of Education of Newfoundland, the Eastern School District and Memorial University of Newfoundland. This is my second year participating in such a project, but my first year focusing on literacy. The first Teachers as Researchers project involved teaching mathematics in the grade one classroom. For those wanting to read the research results, you may indicate in your posting that you wish to receive a copy and I will send one to your inbox.
For the project this year I am focusing on critical literacy, and using technology to represent student's learning, as the heading suggests. Critical literacy is not a new concept, but addressing it in the form of "new literacies" is somewhat recent. In today's society, children are bombarded with multimedia and multimodal images. Do they understand what these images are about and how it is positioning them in society? Are they aware of the influences these images may have on their interactions with each other?
I am hoping to provide opportunities in my classroom for children to examine various forms of multimedia and multimodal text, as well as using a critical approach to examine everyday situations.
The first activity I hope to do is an assessment of the children's internet experiences as I am not even sure who has a computer in my class.
Another activity will consist of examining several children's websites in a critical manner by asking questions such as:
I am currently involved in a Teachers as Researchers project with the Department of Education of Newfoundland, the Eastern School District and Memorial University of Newfoundland. This is my second year participating in such a project, but my first year focusing on literacy. The first Teachers as Researchers project involved teaching mathematics in the grade one classroom. For those wanting to read the research results, you may indicate in your posting that you wish to receive a copy and I will send one to your inbox.
For the project this year I am focusing on critical literacy, and using technology to represent student's learning, as the heading suggests. Critical literacy is not a new concept, but addressing it in the form of "new literacies" is somewhat recent. In today's society, children are bombarded with multimedia and multimodal images. Do they understand what these images are about and how it is positioning them in society? Are they aware of the influences these images may have on their interactions with each other?
I am hoping to provide opportunities in my classroom for children to examine various forms of multimedia and multimodal text, as well as using a critical approach to examine everyday situations.
The first activity I hope to do is an assessment of the children's internet experiences as I am not even sure who has a computer in my class.
Another activity will consist of examining several children's websites in a critical manner by asking questions such as:
- Who wrote this text?
- Where did the text come from?
- What is the author's intent?
- Who is represented?
- Who is missing?
- What is the text trying to do to me?
- Is the text from a reliable source?
(These questions came from Dr. Allan Luke: The New Literacies Podcast)
To view this podcast, click on the link below:
http://www.curriculum.org/secretariat/may31.shtml
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