Units of Study Reading Critical Literacy

This unit is about cultural relevance and getting teens to fall in love with books that are deeply meaningful to the lives they are living right now. The unit will introduce young people to some of the great writers of their generation, the writers who are writing for them, and will create powerful opportunities for teens to share their voices, and find their places, in school and in the world.

Across the unit, readers will:

• Deepen their comprehension, studying summaries and reviews in preparation for reading and developing their own analytical summarising techniques; Consider transactional reading practices, identifying the ways that readers bring their own identities to a text and the ways that these identities shape their responses;
• Be innovative in their writing about reading, annotating and taking longer-form notes in reading notebooks to engage more deeply with texts and other readers;
• Investigate power dynamics, power systems, and sources of power through theoretical lenses;
• Become literacy activists, learning to speak seriously and passionately about books they choose to read and recommend to book club peers.

The goal of this unit is to teach contemporary literature in a way that empowers our students as democratic readers and thinkers, and young activists.

The Units of Study for Teaching Reading series saves teachers hundreds of hours of planning, freeing time for analysing student work, working with individuals and small groups, and for studying with colleagues. The series provides teachers with the tools and support they need to move students quickly and efficiently toward grade-level expectations, while also helping kids become proficient, lifelong readers.