41 Understanding the Purpose of Critical Literacy Skills and Developing Strategies
What is Critical Literacy?
In this Critical Literacy class, you will be expected to rehearse, revise, and refine your work. You can practice the skills that you’ll be learning. You will revise your work, making it better each time after having a chance to evaluate it yourself and receive feedback on what you can do better. You will also refine your work, making it as perfect as you can make it each time.
In this class, you will be evaluating your own skills, evaluating the skills of your peers, and you will receive feedback from your teacher. Evaluation in this class is for understanding how you can improve your skills.
Let’s take a very close look at the objectives of this class. What can you expect to learn in this class?
Answer these questions as completely as you can. Remember, there is not one single correct answer; there may be many ways to answer the questions.
- What does it mean to read actively and critically?
- What does it mean to annotate effectively?
- What does it mean to identify and deconstruct abstract ideas found in complex academic texts?
- What does it mean to formulate and explain valid inferences based on information from texts?
- What does it mean to write and evaluate arguments for validity and credibility?
- What does it mean to locate, evaluate and synthesize ideas and information from multiple sources and varying points of view?
- What does it mean to support ideas with adequate and varied evidence?
What does it mean to summarize, paraphrase and quote information from source materials? - What does it mean to create citations using information from source materials?
- What does it mean to tailor language to address a specific audience?
- What does it mean to employ syntax and usage appropriate to academic disciplines and the professional world?
- What does it mean to use strategies to effectively address the non-cognitive issues that could affect students’ academic success?
Essential Questions
Critical Literacy Essential Questions
Essential Questions to ask at the Beginning of Any Class
Describe the objectives of your class (you might find these in the course outline)
Describe what you already know about how to meet these objectives. This might refer to work you’ve done in high school, for your job, or for your own personal learning.
Look at the activities included in your syllabus for the class.
Why develop Literacy Skills?
What do you think?
What’s the point of a sentence?
What is the purpose of communication?
What is the purpose of communication in an academic culture?
How can we use agreed upon rules for communicating and understanding?
Why do we have agreed upon rules for grammar?
How do paragraphs work together to make meaningful journals, essay, articles, and discussions?
Why do we have agreed upon rules for punctuation?