Critical Literacy Activity

I admit that I was a bit intimidated using a critical literacy approach to learning, but now my literacy program would be incomplete without it. Very often, people assume that young children are incapable of identifying social injustices, discrimination and stereotyping in the world around them, and not having the power to make a change. This could not be further from the truth! I will give an example of how a recent comment made by a student in my in my classroom set us all on a journey of self discovery.

A male student was looking for a background image to illustrate the “All About Me” information we had just composed about him on the Smartboard. When he came to a pink background with hearts on it, another boy stated, “You can’t choose that one, it is only for girls!” That started a discussion about what is a girl color and what is a boy color. The obvious answer was: pink is for girls and blue is for boys. We talked about whether or not girls could like blue and if boys could like pink. It was interesting to note that some boys took great exception when a lone boy said he liked pink, but nothing was said when several girls stated the liked blue. From this discussion, I knew that I some work to do in the area of gender discrimination.

In our library I found a book called “William’s Doll”, by Charlotte Zolotto. The story is of a boy, William, who wants a doll, but his father refuses to buy him one and his brother along with another friend calls him a “sissy”. The father instead buys him a basketball and a train set. Although William likes those things he still wants a doll. When his grandmother comes to visit, he shows her the basketball and train set, but he told her what he really wanted was a doll. They both went and picked out a doll and when they came home with it, the father was quite upset. The grandmother went on to say to the father that with a doll William could cuddle it, nurture it, take care of it, ect- all the things that would make him a great dad when he grows up.

Before I read the story to the children, we discussed what kinds of toys they liked to play with. Out of that discussion, I asked them if it was ok for boys to play with dolls and if girls could play with Pokemon (as these seemed to be the dominant toys that the boys and girls played with in my class). Some of the girls were quick to say they liked playing with Pokemon, but the boys were reluctant to admit that they liked playing with dolls. The same boy in the earlier discussion who made the comment, “Pink is for girls”, was adamant that boys should not play with dolls, although he didn’t mind girls playing with Pokemon.

As I read the book, I asked the children to pretend they had a camera and I asked them to take a picture of a part in the story that they connected to in their own life. After the story, they drew their pictures on sticky notes and we discussed each of them. Many children drew pictures of a time when they really wanted something, but others made fun of them for it. We revisited the book several times after that and through discussions I could actually observe many children changing their mind about whether toys are “boy toys or girl toys”.

From that activity we decided to look at flyers, Toys R Us flyers in particular, to see what kinds of toys boys and girls were playing with in the pictures. The children discovered many things including: boys were the only ones playing with vehicle toys, boys were driving vehicles and the girls were in the passenger seats, pictures of boys playing were on blue pages, and the girls were on pink pages, only girls were shown playing with dolls and both girls and boys were playing at the art easel.

After the deconstruction of the flyer, the students recreated the flyer so it was unbiased toward the type of toys that girls and boys played with.

To promote social action, the students then wrote a letter to Toys R Us and explained their argument for representing girls and boys in an unbiased way in the flyers.

This is only one example of how I incorporate critical literacy into my grade one classroom. There are so many other examples that I could add. My point is that it can be done, and we have to ensure that we afford our students the opportunity to engage in meaningful learning and to know that even at the young age of 6 and 7 years old, they are important and they have the power to make a difference. If they start believing this and experiencing it first hand now, imagine the possibilities when they are older…