Discourse in Language Study and Classroom Practices
This semester, I am honored to be working as a graduate assistant in a course titled, Language Development in First and Second Languages, Assessment and Teaching in Reading and Language Arts. The course professor has given me plenty of freedoms to prepare presentations and discussion sessions, which will hopefully help narrow my focus as my thesis project presentation date comes closer. This week, using the musings of concepts from Yetta Goodman's, Valuing Language Study and a set of "I Am" poems from a writing exchange project I did with a teacher of English students in South Korea, I put together a project for the the graduate students to begin a discourse in using language study as a tool for teaching and learning.
I first spotted the "I Am" poem template one day while substitute teaching in a high school English classroom. The room was filled with student work covering every wall, giving me the idea that students in this classroom felt a rightful ownership and a sense of pride over their work. I appreciate seeing student-made environmental print in classrooms. Far too often, classrooms are quite neat and tidy with teacher-made, or teacher-store purchased posters and print, but they lack the written voices of the 20-30 individuals that live there during the majority of their weekday waking hours.
As teacher, I am committed to discovering what each of my students knows about, cares about and can do. As substitute teacher at this time, I don't have the opportunity to develop long-term relationships with students, which is a necessary component to understanding each student's ways of constructing and expressing knowledge over time. But each day I spend in a classroom, or with a group of students after school, I aim to finding ways to conduct my inquiry into language and begin discussions with teachers and students about language.
I Am Poems:
I was initially drawn to this poetry project because of the open-ended and thought provoking context it offers. Students can delve as deeply into themselves, or as surface level with their responses as they wish. It offers the opportunity for response patterns, or unique answers for each prompt, and students can write as much, or as little as they want to. I also thought it would work well for students of all ages.
I first introduced this project to my group K-8 of after school writers- The Candy Houses Writing Collective as an pen-pal starter with Luke's students in South Korea. They enjoyed the prompts, and the idea of sending of a glimpse of themselves to foreign students on the other side of the world. When they arrived in South Korea, Luke gave them to his student to read, and they sent back a collection of their own I am poems, many accompanied by pictures of themselves and other representations of their lives.
Seeing the letters that came back was absolutely fascinating because I was able to observe so many topics that could be used in classroom discussion. Some possible discussion topics could cover anything from: gender differences perceived from writing, drawings and content; language structure and context, cultural differences and similarities; student life differences and similarities; handwriting; values; to the use of language as a form of expression, and more. Looking at these letters immediately brought to mind Yetta Goodman's
We know that the young learn language all the time whether or not teachers are involved. On the other hand, teachers have significant opportunities to help students make explicit their intuitive knowledge about language, to reflect on what they know about language, and to see if what they know fits what others know about language use (Goodman, 2003).
I've been thinking a lot about Yetta's rationale for language study, and I wanted initiate a discourse with the graduate students about their ideas, thoughts and perspectives on using authentic language study in the classroom setting. After writing their own I Am poems together in groups for the experience of doing it, I asked them to look through several of the poems written by South Korean students. I was interested to see what they noticed, and how they might use this project or something similar to apply one or more of the above principles to their own rationale for language study in their own classrooms.
Most of what was shared by the teachers/ graduate students were strategies they would use such to accompany the poetry project such as writing this poem from the perspective of a literary figure, having students act out pieces of the poem as a method for using drama and movement to enhance language learners' literacy development, etc. These are all great literacy building strategies of course, but I was most interested in talking about language from more of an ethnographic perspective. I realize however, that if teaching language has not been looked at first from a place of what learners already know, it's difficult to initiate dialogue about a concept that may feel so foreign. The result however is a most rewarding experience, as I will share with this week's language study event in my next post.
I first spotted the "I Am" poem template one day while substitute teaching in a high school English classroom. The room was filled with student work covering every wall, giving me the idea that students in this classroom felt a rightful ownership and a sense of pride over their work. I appreciate seeing student-made environmental print in classrooms. Far too often, classrooms are quite neat and tidy with teacher-made, or teacher-store purchased posters and print, but they lack the written voices of the 20-30 individuals that live there during the majority of their weekday waking hours.
As teacher, I am committed to discovering what each of my students knows about, cares about and can do. As substitute teacher at this time, I don't have the opportunity to develop long-term relationships with students, which is a necessary component to understanding each student's ways of constructing and expressing knowledge over time. But each day I spend in a classroom, or with a group of students after school, I aim to finding ways to conduct my inquiry into language and begin discussions with teachers and students about language.
I Am Poems:
I was initially drawn to this poetry project because of the open-ended and thought provoking context it offers. Students can delve as deeply into themselves, or as surface level with their responses as they wish. It offers the opportunity for response patterns, or unique answers for each prompt, and students can write as much, or as little as they want to. I also thought it would work well for students of all ages.
I first introduced this project to my group K-8 of after school writers- The Candy Houses Writing Collective as an pen-pal starter with Luke's students in South Korea. They enjoyed the prompts, and the idea of sending of a glimpse of themselves to foreign students on the other side of the world. When they arrived in South Korea, Luke gave them to his student to read, and they sent back a collection of their own I am poems, many accompanied by pictures of themselves and other representations of their lives.
Seeing the letters that came back was absolutely fascinating because I was able to observe so many topics that could be used in classroom discussion. Some possible discussion topics could cover anything from: gender differences perceived from writing, drawings and content; language structure and context, cultural differences and similarities; student life differences and similarities; handwriting; values; to the use of language as a form of expression, and more. Looking at these letters immediately brought to mind Yetta Goodman's
Principals for Language Study Curriculum (p. 9)
1. Language is a powerful tool with which to think, to communicate with others, and to explore the universe. 2. Language is best understood when it is examined in the context of human language events that occur in the real world. 3. It is legitimate to use appropriate linguistic terminology when talking about and studying language. 4. Language study needs to include the latest knowledge and questions that linguists raise about how language works and how it is learned. |
We know that the young learn language all the time whether or not teachers are involved. On the other hand, teachers have significant opportunities to help students make explicit their intuitive knowledge about language, to reflect on what they know about language, and to see if what they know fits what others know about language use (Goodman, 2003).
I've been thinking a lot about Yetta's rationale for language study, and I wanted initiate a discourse with the graduate students about their ideas, thoughts and perspectives on using authentic language study in the classroom setting. After writing their own I Am poems together in groups for the experience of doing it, I asked them to look through several of the poems written by South Korean students. I was interested to see what they noticed, and how they might use this project or something similar to apply one or more of the above principles to their own rationale for language study in their own classrooms.
Most of what was shared by the teachers/ graduate students were strategies they would use such to accompany the poetry project such as writing this poem from the perspective of a literary figure, having students act out pieces of the poem as a method for using drama and movement to enhance language learners' literacy development, etc. These are all great literacy building strategies of course, but I was most interested in talking about language from more of an ethnographic perspective. I realize however, that if teaching language has not been looked at first from a place of what learners already know, it's difficult to initiate dialogue about a concept that may feel so foreign. The result however is a most rewarding experience, as I will share with this week's language study event in my next post.
I'm so inspired by your explorations into language and literacy development over ages and cultures, within and outside the classroom. I, too, had pen pals in South Korea with my third graders, but mostly it was a standard letter-writing exchange. I just posted my first "I Am" poem, written when I was in 6th grade, to my blog--featuring Literacy Roots as the writer's website of the week! Thanks.
ReplyDeletewow Nicole- just seeing this now for the first time. Thanks for all your encouragement Nicole. It's really appreciated.
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