Brief+overview

=Brief Overview of= =//Planting Seeds: Embedding Critical Literacy into your Classroom Programme//=

Literacy once meant reading and writing words on paper. Today’s students need to be able to understand, use and critically analyse many different text types for different purposes in diverse contexts.

This book sets out to support teachers to engage with the theory and practice of critical literacy. The author is an engaging and thoughtful guide through the theory, or “why this chapter is too important to skip,” to the practical considerations. These include the tensions between traditional assessment critical literacy (“how do I know what they have learned?”) and managing student voice (“when do I get my voice back?”).

Along the way there are reflective interludes—questions aimed at stimulating thinking, discussion and professional development. The book also has pointers to further reading and support material and includes a lesson plan template. The aim is to provide ways of thinking about the pedagogy and assessment of critical literacy that will support teachers to implement critical literacy strategies across all content areas.

This book grew out of a Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) project with support from the University of Otago, which involved 17 teachers at five schools wrestling with the ideas and practical dilemmas of critical literacy.