Linda Rief acknowledges that in order to engage students in meaningful critical literacy learning, writing should not be used as a tool to administer tests that represent a series of memorization, but, rather writing should be done to express our feelings and thoughts. It is seen as a way to learn about ourselves. As writers we are motivated to write through the idea of having an audience, a purpose, and a choice. These three motivational ideas will provide us with good writing pieces. Arlington also agrees that we are distracted as critical learners by the “narrowly focused state assessments” (Delpit 287).
Rief believes that in order to make our students “thoughtful citizens” we must let them hold the responsibility of their own critical literacy learning. The teachers must provide more students centered writing, reading, listening, and speaking activities and less teacher directed activities. “…we want children to become adults who articulate, literate, and thoughtful citizens of the world, they must learn to think deeply and widely. They must commit their thinking to paper… In these roles, they and others can examine those beliefs, feelings, and thoughts; build on the same sentiments; provide the evidence to support the thinking; or argue vehemently against it” (190).
Robert Moses acknowledges that critical literacy must be reinforced in the Math subject in order to stop inequality in our society. He states that “The Algebra Project is founded on the idea that the ongoing struggle for citizenship and equality for minority people is now linked to an issue of math and science literacy” (Moses pg. 14). He makes this statement by attesting to the high needs of today’s workforce for “high-tech workers” and the battle to stop minorities and poor people from obtaining these jobs. “Industrial technology created schools that educated an elite to run society, while the rest were prepared for factory work by performing repetitive tasks that mimicked factories. New technology demands a new literacy – higher math skills for everyone, urban and rural” (Moses pg. 11).
Jeffrey Wilhelm and Michael Smith believe that the best way to engage students is through critical literacy by using an array of texts that gives the readers a choice that is based on their interests. The reader needs to be able to connect to the reading, “Out work shows us that kids need to find both personal connection and social significance in the units and texts we offer them” (Delpit 233). Critical literacy should be accomplished through the planning of a differentiated lesson plan that will allow each individual to be challenged. “What Our Boys Taught Us: Teachers must provide a wide variety of differentiated opportunities to develop competence and become competent, to practice, participate, and be successful as a certain kind of reader or writer, and to name and celebrate our students as readers, writers, thinkers, and disciplinary problem solvers” (Delpit 241). Wilhelm and Smith end their writing by saying, “Maybe engagement is the cause of competence. If we think hard about motivating our students, if we devise units that address questions of genuine importance, expand our notions of text, value meaningful textual engagement and textual pressure, and broaden our notions of competence, our students are sure to profit” (Delpit 242). The source of critical literacy is found by engaging students through the interests the reader finds in the matter of books and the challenge presented to the student.
Richard Allington agrees with Wilhelm and Smith by attesting to the use of a variety of texts will engage students and promote critical literacy. “…virtually all students could find texts that they were able to read accurately, fluently, and with comprehension. The second advantage was that when students were provided opportunities to select which text(s) they would read for a given topic or unit, their level of engagement in academic work was high and sustained. Giving students such choices is a powerful factor in motivating engagement and fostering achievement, as a meta-analysis reported by Guthrie and Humenick (2004) so powerfully demonstrated” (Delpit 278).
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