Encouraging DEI Through Critical Thinking with Literature
Friday, November 5, 2021 ⬥ 10:40 – 11:30 AM
Presented by Ruth Okoye
Session Description:
Let us introduce you to the thought process behind our book club for teachers. We use trade books, critical thinking skills, and reading strategies when helping teachers plan to spark conversations about diversity and inclusion during language arts instruction. In this session, you will find opportunities to think critically about identity, bias, stereotypes, and empathy and use tech tools to facilitate activities throughout the reading and writing cycle.
Purpose:
Many teachers are interested in learning how to help students understand the effects of bias and associated topics given growing social tensions. Using literature to set the stage for critical thinking around the concepts of inclusion, friendship, justice, race, and class allows students to draw their own conclusions without supplanting parental moral guidance.
The purpose of this presentation is to share examples of literature and activities that can be used when helping students to sift through issues surrounding bias. A variety of language arts and critical thinking activities will be shared. Some use technology tools such as Sway, Flipgrid and Synth. All can be used in remote/blended learning situations. While the books used in the examples are Strictly No Elephants, We’re Not From Here, New Kid, and Children of Blood and Bone, the activities are easily transferable to other books.
Participants will see examples of how to use popular books to spark discussions about challenging topics, learn strategies to help students draw real-world connections to the fiction they read, and leave with a proven approach for planning and executing discussion-based lessons.
Objectives:
In this presentation, we will share how we chose both reading and critical thinking strategies and paired them with trade books to demonstrate to teachers how to create authentic reading activities for their students. The activities demonstrated can be deployed in multiple types of learning environments. Discussion and ideas about characters and the book activate deep learning that informs student cross-cultural understanding.
Participants who are coaches will see the use of an online platform to deliver professional learning while modeling best practices. Classroom teachers will be able to sift through instructional ideas representing various ways to use tech tools and determine what would work in their setting. After determining how the strategies would work in their classroom or for their content, participants will be able to replicate the activities shown and create their own.