Session Overview: This theory-to-practice session provides examples of how K-12 ELA teachers can use critical media literacy and ecowriting to analyze climate issues and expand students' awareness by creating alternative media to advocate for environmental justice. The following resources are available for adapting into your classroom practice.
Critical Media Literacy and Ecowriting
UCLA's Library Research Guide on Critical Media Literacy. PDFs of the Critical Media Literacy Framework: Conceptual Understandings and Guiding Questions (Kellner & Share, 2019, p. 8) are available in several languages at: https://guides.library.ucla.edu/educ466.
Fossil Fuel Disinformation Targeting K-12 and Postsecondary Schools
Before reading climate children's literature, early learners could use a "See Think Wonder" strategy to go out into nature and use their 5 senses to observe the natural world and environmental issues impacting their communities.
After reading, students can work in small groups using age-level appropriate versions of the Critical Media Literacy Framework Guiding Questions to analyze and produce their own alternative media that challenges disinformation about the fossil fuel industry.
Canva. A free-to-use template-based graphic design tool useful for learners to create their own climate countermedia,
Figure 1
The REAL Kids Guide to the Climate Emergency Alternative Book Cover
Note. Created by 5th-graders at a public school in the Southeastern U.S. to challenge climate disinformation after analyzing "The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change."
Fast Fashion Disinformation and Greenwashing
11th-grade ELA students (Southwestern U.S.) worked in small groups to analyze advertisements from Shein (a popular fast fashion retailer). The teacher scaffolded their learning by asking them to "Turn and Talk" using the Critical Media Literacy Framework Guiding Questions:
Next, students analyzed a digital poster ("Six Sins of Greenwashing" -- see full guide) and Tedx video (Johnsen, 2021) about how to identify greenwashing advertising techniques.
Students applied their new understandings about greenwashing and used the Critical Media Literacy Framework Guiding Questionsagain to analyze an advertising campaign called evoluSHEIN. Later, students viewed a documentary created by ABC News Impact x Nightline (2023) entitled "Unboxing Shein" (see excerpt below).After students watched the documentary, they reflected for 15-minutes using a "free-writing" strategy (Elbow, 1973).
Colleen Redmond, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
“Teaching Active Hope and Climate Justice with Stories of Youth Climate Activism: The Climate Book, Drawn to Change the World, and Old Enough to Save the Planet.”
“Claymores, “Slow violence” and climate literacy: Using war literature to make connections between ecocidal practices, war, and environmental justice; from Fallen Angels (Myers, 1988) to The Poppy War (Kuang, 2018)”
“Reclaiming Campus: Seeing Hope in Trees through Native Languages”
Jade Cashman, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee & Schlitz Audubon Nature Center
“Rooted in Heart, Hope, and Little Humans – Phenology-based Poetry Selections as Action in Promoting Environmental Literacies in Early Childhood Education”
Rob Wilson, Rowland Hall High School, "Teaching about Climate with Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac."
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