LLED 441 / 63C: Introduction to Teaching Children’s Literature
Special Section with Focus on Early Childhood Contexts
2020 Winter 2 (Jan 4 – Apr 8, 2021)
LLED 441 is a core course for the BC ECE Basic Certificate program. This special section focuses on the potential far-reaching impact and intent of children’s literature as a resource for nurturing the Hundred Languages of children. Children’s literature is the springboard for developing multi-literacies across all aspects of children’s development as well as a litmus for development of early learner identity, agency, and social and emotional well-being. The multimodal forms of literature offer content and inspiration for transformative activities and reflective thinking that serve young children’s literacy and literary development as well as holistic development.
This course explores the use of children’s literature in contexts of the early years (birth – age 8) and elaborates on ways to use literary experiences to support ECE program goals. Through responses to the readings and curation of literature resources, students consider ways of employing multiliteracies and resources in their own early years environments with a particular emphasis on how to promote awareness of Indigeneity, anti-racism and social justice.
Assignments include responses to key issues such as the purpose and value of a diverse literary canon, the creation of community canons that serve particular student populations, popular sequential visual narrative forms, and literature as a resource for developing empathy and motivating social action.