Search

The J.E. Moss Literacy Community worked together to develop teacher knowledge around text selection and evaluation by critically looking at elements of diversity, quality, and kid appeal for classroom titles. Books were analyzed through three lenses: readers, evaluative criteria, and instruction. Through this three-lens framework, teachers discovered a method to analyze and select texts that are appealing to readers, thought provoking for students, and inspirational for teachers.

The J.E. Moss Literacy Group was formed to facilitate critical discussions of global and dual language literature and to strengthen teaching practices. The central research question each teacher worked around was: What does teaching look like as teachers engage students in analyzing the illustrations and text in global literature (picturebooks), both online and in person? In this vignette, each teacher shares their story of how this professional development work looked in classroom settings, focused around specific global picturebooks.

Elementary teachers at J.E. Moss Elementary explore the critical use of global texts in the classroom with a focus on analyzing the significance of illustrations in literature, as well as the interplay between the illustrations and the text. They created a picturebook codes to center discussions on a single topic: a code of color, a code of line, and a code of position and size. This allows young students to have a clear focus when critically reading and analyzing picturebooks in the classroom.