This research, carried out as part of a stricto sensu postgraduate course, proposes reflecting on children's literacy in a critical dimension based on Paulo Freire's proposals. Thinking about literacy in this way requires asking about the principles that underpin the different conceptions of the process of teaching and learning to read and write, i.e. what model of literacy one has or wishes to have; what is meant by reading and writing, which implies recognising that it is the epistemological and political assumptions that underpin the decisions about literacy that are made in the classroom, translated into the selection of content, methodologies and resources and materials, and, above all, in the social relationships that are established in the educational act.