Through stories from kindergarten to sixth grade classrooms where students and teachers have attempted to put a critical edge on their teaching, this book shows critical literacy in action across the curriculum. Readers see students and teachers together using critical literacy discourse to frame conversations in ways that engage students in examining the meaning of the texts they read and acting on local and global social issues that emerge. Drawing on multiple perspectives such as cross-curricular explorations, multimedia, and child-centered inquiry pedagogies, the text features a theoretical toolkit; demonstrations from across the content areas including art, music, and media literacy; integration of technology; and attention to how critical literacy can inform decisions about standards and assessment. Annotated booklists, examples of students’ work, Reflection Questions, Try This (practical classroom strategies), and Resource Boxes can be used to encourage and support engaging in critical literacy work in different areas of the curriculum.

Critical Literacy as Resistance is a collaborate effort among secondary and university educators from across the United States that addresses questions such as: What does a critical literacy classroom look like? What various texts are used? What strategies do teachers use to encourage students and teacher candidates to recognize how texts construct power and privilege? How do educators inspire activism in and out of the classroom? This book documents the experiences of scholars and teachers who have successfully bridged theory and practice by applying critical literacy into their respective content areas. The authors spell out the difference between critical thinking and critical literacy, then show how to write and implement curriculum that incorporates diverse texts and multiple literacies in all content areas (including world language), and includes the voices of students as they confront issues of race, class, gender, and power. The principles and practices laid out here will help teachers use literacy to liberate and empower students both in and outside the classroom by respecting and studying the literacies students bring to school, while simultaneously teaching (and challenging) the literacies of those in power. This is a book for pre- and in-service teachers in all content areas, staff developers, secondary literacy specialists, university professors, and anyone interested in social justice.

Through stories from kindergarten to sixth grade classrooms where students and teachers have attempted to put a critical edge on their teaching, this book shows critical literacy in action across the curriculum. Readers see students and teachers together using critical literacy discourse to frame conversations in ways that engage students in examining the meaning of the texts they read and acting on local and global social issues that emerge. Drawing on multiple perspectives such as cross-curricular explorations, multimedia, and child-centered inquiry pedagogies, the text features a theoretical toolkit; demonstrations from across the content areas including art, music, and media literacy; integration of technology; and attention to how critical literacy can inform decisions about standards and assessment. Annotated booklists, examples of students’ work, Reflection Questions, Try This (practical classroom strategies), and Resource Boxes can be used to encourage and support engaging in critical literacy work in different areas of the curriculum.

"This is an excellent text. I particularly liked how the authors share examples of critical literacy throughout the book, especially with digital and multimedia texts." —Peter McDermott, The Sage Colleges "Through realistic discussion of how text shapes us and is shaped by us, Critical Literacy provides pre- and in-service teachers with concrete ways to engage in critical literacy practices with children from elementary through high school." —Cheryl A. Kreutter, St. John Fisher College ...a unique, practical critical literacy text with concrete examples and theoretical tools for pre- and in-service teachers Authors Lisa Patel Stevens and Thomas W. Bean explore the historical and political foundations of critical literacy and present a comprehensive examination of its uses for K-12 classroom practice. Key Features: Focuses on the nexus of critical literacy theory and practice through real classroom examples, vignettes, and conversations among teachers and teacher educators Illustrates how critical literacy practices are enacted in the classroom at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Offers step-by-step teaching strategies for implementing critical literacy in K-12 classrooms at different paces, depending on existing curriculum Intended Audience: This is an excellent supplemental text for a variety of advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in education departments on how to teach reading and writing. This text will also appeal to instructors and students exploring issues of representation, linguistics, and critical deconstruction.

This popular text articulates a powerful theory of critical literacy—in all its complexity. Critical literacy practices encourage students to use language to question the everyday world, interrogate the relationship between language and power, analyze popular culture and media, understand how power relationships are socially constructed, and consider actions that can be taken to promote social justice. By providing both a model for critical literacy instruction and many examples of how critical practices can be enacted in daily school life in elementary and middle school classrooms, Creating Critical Classrooms meets a huge need for a practical, theoretically based text on this topic. Pedagogical features in each chapter • Teacher-researcher Vignette • Theories that Inform Practice • Critical Literacy Chart • Thought Piece • Invitations for Disruption • Lingering Questions New in the Second Edition • End-of-chapter "Voices from the Field" • More upper elementary-grade examples • New text sets drawn from "Classroom Resources" • Streamlined, restructured, revised, and updated throughout • Expanded Companion Website now includes annotated Classroom Resources; Text Sets; Resources by Chapter; Invitations for Students; Literacy Strategies; Additional Resources

The editors discuss the transformative possibilities of literacy through a collection of 12 articles originally published in Primary Voices K-6. Based on a view of literacy as social practice, this book highlights the ways in which classroom teachers and educators have practiced and imagined teaching literacy in everyday classrooms. The twelve essays published here originally appeared in the NCTE journal Primary Voices K-6 and highlight four key issues essential to literacy practice in elementary classrooms: access, meaning making, inquiry, and transformation. The individual essays challenge us to go beyond a view of literacy as a simple matter of skill and help to realize its transformative power. In providing a contemporary conceptual framework and further resources, the editors have looked not only back to Primary Voices K-6 but also forward, noting that the practices reported in the book represent only the tip of what is possible and including throughout the volume discussions of what the future might look like and how particular sets of social practices might mature and evolve.

This book is written primarily for pre-service and in-service teachers of Literacy/English Language Arts, school administrators, literacy graduate education students, and literacy education researchers, and addresses the myriad of questions regarding the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Classroom teachers and pre-service teachers are currently confronting questions such as how they can teach the Common Core State Standards to make sure they are fully addressing them; how they can have the time to teach students to have deeper understandings of the skills and concepts addressed in the Standards; what they can do to meet the learning needs of diverse students such as English language learners and students with learning disabilities; whether teachers of content areas are required to add reading instruction to their teaching responsibilities; whether the Standards tell teachers what to teach; and whether the document tells teachers how to implement the Standards in the classroom, among others. This book is designed to answer these questions and many others. Each chapter contains instructional practices, examples, vignettes, and illustrations that connect the Common Core State Standards to classroom practices, and thereby provide pre-service and in-service teachers with meaningful, relevant, and practical teaching strategies to prepare culturally, academically, and linguistically diverse students in California and other states of the nation for both career and college. In this regard, readers of this book will find that the authors have provided a pathway to better understand the Common Core State Standards, and will be able to use what they learn in the pages of this book to provide more effective instruction for their students across the disciplines to read, analyse, and critique complex texts and apply knowledge to solve practical, real-life problems.