CANCELLED Using Media Literacy as a Tool to Interrogate Picture Books

This session will engage participants in ways to apply media literacy tools when sharing picture books with younger students. Picture books have long held a pedagogical role in elementary curriculum but the potential for using them to teach key media literacy concepts has been neglected. In specific, Caldecott-winning picture books will be explored as a way teach media literacy skills to both elementary and middle school students. Media literacy tools can serve as a bridge to meaningful critical literacy practices and offer opportunities for librarians and classroom teachers to collaborate. The NAMLE (National Association for Media Literacy Education) media literacy framework provides opportunities to explore new dimensions of critical literacy that could lead to innovative pedagogical practices with picture books. NAMLE offers a framework for media literate meaning making comprised of ten categories of questions. In our presentation, we draw on recent Caldecott winners to show that the NAMLE key questions for media literacy offer a more sustained focus on audiences and production than is typical in elementary contexts, while the categories and questions of economics, effects, responses, and purposes offer elementary teachers opportunities to expose young readers to these concepts.