‘Begin at the beginning’, as emphasised in the Scottish Information Literacy Project slideshow below, sums up my thoughts on the importance of teaching information/critical literacy. There is a lot of information out there, and obviously, a lot of misinformation too. It was quite funny, but also extremely worrying when a classmate related her ‘hotdog’ story. While on prac she saw the children do an online search for a particular topic, come across and actually accept a silly and nonsensical answer (i.e. hotdog) which needless to say, ended up being completely wrong.
As defined in the slideshow, “critical literacy is the way we interact and make meaning from different texts” and “involves the reader analysing and engaging with the text”. In early childhood, this usually starts with children’s literature in the form of books. (However, the project researchers point to many other examples of texts including digital sources such as blogs, social networking sites and webpages).
So in developing children’s information/critical literacy, I would start with texts they are most familiar with first, e.g. information/nonfiction books, novels/fiction books, short stories, poems, etc. In looking at these texts, typical activities would involve thinking about the purpose, the audience, (author and reader), the type of text, the main ideas, making connections and comparisons (i.e. trinagulation) extracting and organising information and so on. These strategies for reading and comprehending what is read, would certainly be appropriate for digital literacies also.
‘Crap detection 101’ should be a class made available in the lower levels, definitely. :)
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