Negotiating the Literacy Block:
Constructing Spaces for Critical Literacy in a High Stakes Setting
Patricia Paugh, Jane Carey, Valerie King-Jackson, Shelley Russell
This article focuses on the evolution of the classroom literacy block as a learning space where teachers and students renegotiated activities for independent vocabulary and word work within a high-stakes reform environment. When a second grade classroom teacher and literacy support specialist decided to co-teach, they invited all students in the classroom community to design and manage independent activities. As a result, a curriculum evolved over the school year that took on a life unique to the complex social and literacy learning needs existing in an urban second grade classroom. Through this project, the teachers expanded their own relationship and shared resources in ways that allowed them to stay focused upon the official curriculum but also recognize and value unofficial ways of knowing and social norms important to their students (Dyson & Labbo, 2003). As the year ended, the teachers and students recognized how this shared agency changed the physical learning space as well as expanded what counted as literacy knowing for the classroom community.
Volume 85, Number 1, September 2007
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