scholarly journals The Vulnerable Teacher: Working Towards Critical Consciousness in a Second Grade Bilingual Classroom

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-127
Author(s):  
Sandra L. Osorio
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Literature Discussion ◽  
Literature Discussions ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Bilingual Classroom

Telling your students that you are divorced and your two sons no longer live with their father is not the typical kind of conversation you would expect in a classroom, but in my second-grade Spanish–English bilingual classroom, it was the norm. I had decided to implement literature discussion around Latinx children’s literature. I found that in order for my students and I to develop a relationship built on trust and respect, I had to be vulnerable and willing to share some personal narratives. In the following article, I share how I, the teacher, was vulnerable with my students during our literature discussions around Latinx children’s literature in order to have conversations about critical topics, such as, immigration, bilingualism, and family. My ultimate goal was for my students to develop critical consciousness.

Supporting Teacher Candidates as Social Justice Change-Makers

2021 ◽  
pp. 398-421
Author(s):  
Anne Homza ◽  
Tiffeni J. Fontno
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Teacher Candidates ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Shared Goal ◽  
Support Teacher ◽  
Future Work

Critical consciousness, teacher agency, intellectual freedom, and equity-informed practices are vital aspects of a collaboration between a faculty member and an educational librarian, whose shared goal is to support teacher candidates' capacity to use diverse children's literature to teach for social justice. In this chapter, teacher educator Homza and head librarian Fontno share ways to help teacher candidates use diverse children's literature to develop their own critical consciousness, explore issues of equity, and teach for social justice in their future classrooms. Grounding their work in conceptual frameworks, the authors discuss their positionalities, how the literature collection is built, and course activities that use diverse children's literature. Teacher candidates' reflections suggest that these efforts have an impact on their critical consciousness and capacity to engage in the challenging work of transformative pedagogy. The authors share implications for other teacher educators and librarians and questions to explore in future work.

Fast Brisk Structured Lessons Motivation Learning Success Pride

1997 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 16-19
Author(s):  
Asha K. Jitendra ◽  
Rachael Torgerson-Tubiello
Keyword(s):  
Learning Disabilities ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Grade Level ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Second Graders ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Second Grade Students ◽  
Learning Success ◽  
The World

These words describe contraction lessons—and results—in a “contracted” sentence. Second-grade students who were reading at the first-grade level have experienced success with the fast-paced lessons described here. And they have gone on to enjoy the world of children's literature. In this article, we describe how we planned and successfully implemented lessons to teach contractions to a group of 6 low-performing second graders, including Tamara, a girl with learning disabilities (see box).

scholarly journals Exploring Issues of Disability in Children's Literature Discussions

2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Sayers Adomat
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Elementary Education ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Literature Discussions ◽  
Multiage Classrooms ◽  
Literature Circle

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">In this qualitative study, the author uses the theoretical lens of disability studies to examine how children in two multiage classrooms examine issues of disability through conversations during read-aloud and literature circle discussions. In this study, the author looks at how children build positive understandings of disability from children&rsquo;s literature but also how societal attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes might play into their interpretations of literature. Student&rsquo;s talk before, during, and after literature discussions was audio- and videorecorded. Several themes emerged from a discourse analysis of the transcriptions, including: defining disabilities, questioning and critiquing notions of normalcy; idealizing disabilities; identifying with characters; developing an advocacy stance; and using imagination to open up perspectives towards people in the real world. Through exploring characters in books, children not only learned about various disabilities, but they came to understand characters with disabilities as full and complex beings, similar in many ways to themselves.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Keywords:&nbsp;children's literature, literature discussions, disability studies, elementary education, qualitative research</span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>

scholarly journals Promoting Curriculum of Orgullo: Latinx’s Children’s Books and Testimonio

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 124
Author(s):  
Freyca Calderon-Berumen ◽  
Karla O'Donald
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Liberatory Education ◽  
Pedagogical Tool ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Support Students

As educators that are committed to democratic liberatory education for all, we are called to create spaces and places where we can cultivate and curate experiences that can provide avenues for students to develop self-awareness and agency. These dialogical spaces and places will problematize and question students’ knowledge and understanding leading them to articulate perspectives inhibited by hidden curriculum that hinders them from developing and actualizing a sense of self and purpose. This essay provides an example of decolonizing curriculum through children’s literature to support students in exploring, analyzing, and creating testimonies as a way to problematize their understandings and experiences with marginalized communities. Testimonio, embodied in the aesthetics of children’s literature, provides a pivotal pedagogical tool that allows students to critically reflect on systematic oppression, social inequalities, and hegemonic practices. Framed within a curriculum of orgullo (Calderon-Berumen & O’Donald, 2017), the testimonies embedded in children’s literature scaffolds the process of reading, producing, and analyzing students’ personal narratives.

scholarly journals Crossing Consciousness: A literature discussion exploring friends from the other side

2011 ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Julia López-Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Teacher Research ◽  
Research Study ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Literature Discussion ◽  
Literature Discussions ◽  
Diverse Children ◽  
Grade Classroom

This article will focus on the use of small group literature discussions as a curricular engagement that challenges children to think critically and to share the opinions they are forming about the books they read. This teacher research study took place in a bilingual second grade classroom and describes the discourse of four young bilingual children during a discussion about the book Friends From the Other Side/Amigos del otro lado (Anzaldúa, 1993). The question guiding the research is; how do young linguistically and socio economically diverse children make meaning from small group literature discussions about issues that relate to their lives?

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document