A History of Black People as Readers: A Genealogy of Critical Literacy

Classroom Activities

Throughout this unit, students will engage in the following activities in stages as they are broken down below.  All of the instruction and activities in the unit are designed to address the unit’s essential question: How does critical literacy help lead Black creators to create stronger representation of themselves in a world where that can be hard to find?  The goals for the unit are to enhance students’ efficacy with critical literacy through explicit instruction on and practice with the strategy, and then for students to conduct research in order to learn more about the critical literacy strategies I have detailed in my Content Objectives that Black creators have used throughout history.

Part I: Instruction on Critical Literacy and Background Knowledge

In the first part of this unit, students will need significant support in developing background knowledge surrounding critical literacy and the content we will be studying.  On day one of instruction, we will begin class with an introduction to the unit title: Inspiration via Critical Literacy: Filling Gaps in the Canon, and a gallery walk. In the gallery walk, I will pair images that show the juxtaposition of media created with and without Black audiences in mind, as well as images that demonstrate the general idea that our society has largely been developed in a way that erases or diminishes the contributions of Black creators.  Examples of artifacts I may include in the gallery walk are paired stills from television shows made for viewers from different demographics, campaign posters or buttons made in support of Black or white politicians at pivotal moments in US history (the Civil Rights era, the Obama campaign, and, given recent events, artifacts surrounding the endorsements for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election), and images related to the anchor texts for the unit: “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” and A Room of One’s Own, A Raisin in the Sun and Juno and the Paycock, and The Wiz and The Wizard of Oz.  I will also include captions for each image, so students have some context for what they may be seeing for the first time in this unit.

While students navigate the “gallery” of images and artifacts, I will provide them with guiding questions such as:

• What do you notice about who is in these images and who is not?
• Why do you think some of these pictures are paired together?
• What do you notice about similarities and differences between the paired images?
• What do you predict we will be learning about in this unit, based on the images in the gallery walk, as well as the unit’s title?

Students will receive sticky notes to put general observations or questions near the images they observe and to respond to at least one of the guiding questions.  After students have time to maneuver through the entire “gallery,” we will regroup as a class to discuss their findings and their notes.

To end the first day of instruction, I will provide a more formal overview of what we will be learning throughout the unit.  I will use a slide presentation to preview the unit’s texts and relevant vocabulary, such as critical literacy.  I will also provide students with a critical literacy handout that offers reminders of the term’s definition and the focus questions we will use while reading a text.

Part II: Modeling & Gradual Release with Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker

Over the next three days of instruction, we will begin to study Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” as well as its relationship to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.  I will begin day two by modeling my critical literacy process as I read an excerpt from “Chapter One” of A Room of One’s Own, in which Woolf attempts to go into the library at the fictional Oxbridge, but is denied entrance because she is a woman.⁸⁴  As you will likely notice as you read through Woolf’s text, it is written in such a way that it makes comprehension difficult, regardless of a student’s level of need.  Because of this, I will likely utilize an online summary or even an AI differentiation tool to make the text more accessible for my seventh grade students, who are all at various levels in both their academic and English Language Acquisition journeys.  I would encourage other educators who use this unit to use their best judgment when deciding what version of the text to use with their specific students.  I will also make use of visuals to aid both in my students’ understanding of the content of what we are reading, as well as the context (a short video about British women’s rights in the early twentieth century, a photo of Virginia Woolf, contemporary graduation photos from Oxford showing that all the graduates are men, etc.).

Some examples of what I might say when I model my critical literacy for students are listed below:

• Wow, Virginia Woolf seems to be a really good student and reader!
• She is interested to learn more by going into the library and seeing the original copies of the book she’s talking about.
• Oh, I guess she’s not allowed into the library because she’s not a man, so she’s not really a student at the university.
• Why do you have to be a man to go to the library?
• If Virginia Woolf isn’t allowed in the library, I wonder who else is being kept out.

If students have anything to add, I will invite them to do so, and then I will provide a second excerpt, this time the spot in “Chapter One” where Woolf first introduces her thesis, that women need only money and a room of their own to write fiction.⁸⁵  With this example, I will rely on the students’ critical literacy to begin thinking through who is represented and who is not in the text, using their list of guiding questions. 

The third day of instruction will begin with the final step of gradual release, and I will have students work with an excerpt from Alice Walker’s essay, “Saving the Life that is Your Own.”  I will provide students with a piece that illustrates Walker’s discussion of how a lack of models limits the imagination of a creator, and her comparison of works from Black and white writers.⁸⁶  In small groups, students will apply their critical literacy questions to the text, and they will take the next step, and begin observing how Alice Walker might use Virginia Woolf’s text as a jumping-off point to create a wider array of representation.  I will provide the below questions to the student groups to write responses to, in addition to their use of the critical literacy questions for discussion:

• Why does Walker say models are important in the artist’s life?
• What does Walker say is the main difference between literature from Black and white authors?

Once students have had time to review the brief excerpt from “Saving the Life that is Your Own,” they will then receive an abbreviated version of “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” which we will read as a class (I will abbreviate the version my students read to focus primarily on the discussion of Virginia Woolf and Phillis Wheatley, and then focusing on Walker’s narrative about how Black women from the time of slavery have created artwork in their daily lives), and then they will again work in their small groups to address the critical literacy questions on their handout.  I will also provide background on Woolf, Walker, and Wheatley with pictures to help students comprehend as they read.

On the fourth day of instruction, students will receive the following questions to work through in their small groups regarding Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” to support them in deepening their critical reading of the text:

• Whose writing does Walker re-write in her essay?
• Who does Walker say is an example of someone who Virginia Woolf forgot about in her speeches?
• Provide one example of Walker rewriting Woolf’s text so that it represents someone who was originally left out.
• How did Walker use her critical literacy when reading Woolf’s text?
• How did Walker use what she found when using her critical literacy to create something that better represented the people who were missing from the original?

Part III: Guided Research on Text Pairings

Over the next five days of instruction, students will work in pairs to research either of the remaining paired texts I have detailed in the Content Objectives section of this unit.  They will create research questions using the following sentence template: What connections can I find between _______by _______and _______by _______?  Students will have a choice between doing their research on the relationship between either O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, or MGM’s The Wizard of Oz and Ken Harper’s The Wiz.  Students will begin by reading excerpts from each of the texts in their pairing that demonstrate the connections between the two, and will then use a handout with guidelines for search terms to ensure that they find quality information that supports their research questions.  For students with a higher support need, I will also provide webpages or pages from relevant books that students can use to source the information they need.  Below are details regarding the text excerpts and brief activities I will have students use to focus their research for each text pairing.

O’Casey and Hansberry:

Students will read parts from the opening scenes of each play and apply their critical literacy questions to each.  They will also complete a Venn diagram to compare and contrast what they notice about the Boyles and the Youngers as characters, as well as the specific language the characters use when communicating with one another.  They will then read a brief summary of the middle sections of each play, followed by a reading of pieces from the last scenes of each, and then they will add to their Venn diagrams.  Students will also watch clips from film adaptations of each text and take notes on the characterization they see.  Finally, when students have time to conduct their own research on the connections between the two texts, I will provide them with the following questions to make sure they find the relevant information they need:

• Where did Lorraine Hansberry grow up? What about Sean O’Casey?
• How did where each person grew up affect the plays they wrote?
• How did Lorraine Hansberry learn about Sean O’Casey?
• What did Lorraine Hansberry decide she wanted to do similarly to Sean O’Casey? Why? What about the differences?

MGM and Harper

Students who choose to focus on The Wiz will begin by looking at examples of costumes designed by Geoffrey Holder and comparing them to the costumes from the 1939 Wizard of Oz using a Venn diagram.  Students will then look at the scripts from both The Wiz and The Wizard of Oz and compare the language used in each, as well as anything else they notice as similarities and differences.  They will then use the critical literacy questions to consider who each version of the story represents and who is left out.  Students will then read a summary of each text, and view video clips from both the MGM film, as well as the 1978 film adaptation of The Wiz, specifically to see the differences and similarities between the songs “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” and “Ease On Down The Road #1.”  Students will also compare the language, characterization, and visuals from each film in a T- Chart.  Then, when students are conducting their own research on the paired texts, I will provide them with the following questions to make sure they find the information they need:

• Who were the people who created the idea, the script, the music, and the costumes for The Wiz on Broadway in the 1970s? What about The Wizard of Oz (or the book that came before)?
• Were there a lot of other musicals on Broadway that had an all-Black cast and crew at the time that The Wiz came out?
• What were people’s reactions when The Wiz first came out?
• How did the people who created The Wiz help to make it a success, even when it seemed like it might fail?

Part IV: Multimedia Presentations

The final part of this unit will require students to compile the information that they have gathered about their text pairings into a multimedia presentation to share their research.  Students will work together to decide which video clips, images, and text excerpts best illustrate the connections between the texts in their chosen pairing, and then put it all together into a presentation to share with others in the class.  They will include a slide answering the unit’s essential question based on their research, explaining how critical reading can lead to better representation from marginalized creators.  Ultimately, students will present their research in small groups.