Changing Our Minds/Changing the World: The Power of a Question

This article examines the curricular possibilities within critical inquiry-based primary classrooms. The children in this first through third grade multi-age, multi-lingual classroom participated in a two-year critical and collaborative inquiry around issues of segregation and the Jim Crow laws. A touchstone text, Freedom Summer (Wiles, 2001) and a critical reading strategy (Christensen, 2004) offered students opportunities to interrogate the cultural models that underpin the picture book, their interpretations of the book, and their social worlds. Findings from this study indicate that pivotal moments are key to learning and that read-aloud events go beyond community building. The study also examines the use of touchstone texts and positions critical reading strategies as tools for thinking. The findings from this article contribute to the growing body of research demonstrating the engagement of very young children in critical literacy and inquiry.