Critical Literacy

I read the article about critical literacy and I have thought about it before but I didn't know that was what it was called. (if that makes sense) There are many words in math alone that get over used and can hold different meanings. As in the article about average, the teacher posed many questions about the definiton of average and what it means to the students. It was interesting to see the many different answers and interprutations of the word. I define critical literacy as having a deep understanding of a word or subject and its use in context. I am not sure if that is what the article was going for but that is what I took from it. As I mentioned before, there are words that we use to describe something and then later on we find out that the same word could be used differently in a different context. The only way to determine which use is correct is to look at the context and try to decide which definiton makes more sense. I feel that this is very important in the success of any math student. If one does not know what the problem is asking of them or if the problem is misunderstood, that likelihood of successfully answering the prompt significantly decreases. In the article, I liked how the teacher gave the students the opportunity to write down what they knew about the word. Then after presenting the actual definition or the intended definiton for the subject, the teacher linked word to a class discussion about the distribution of wealth. Even though they had pervious defintions of the word, they were able to determine which was the correct definiton for that context. It gave them an opportunity to think deeper about the word and its meaning. In my classroom I would like to give the students the opportunity to share what they already know about a subject word. Then I would give them my definiton and ask them if the two are related and how are they related. If I can connect my definion with that of which they already came into the class with, then it is more likely that they will retain that definition for future use. I have said this many times but vocabulary is a very important part of math and the successes of the students could depend on their ability to understand what is being asked  of tthem..