Literature and Information

Classroom Activities

Activity One: “Blind Sort”

I have found that picture sorting is an especially valuable activity in the classroom. It forces the students to look at pictures and think critically about connections between those pictures. I have found that to make a sort blind adds another level of challenge to the activity. It raises the level of rigor and higher thinking. My class will be doing a blind sort to begin this unit.

To prepare for the blind sort, I will search online for the words Chinese and Mexican. I will be looking for pictures that seem to showcase some aspect of the culture being sought. To narrow the search I can pair the words Chinese and Mexican with a second term such as clothing, architecture, food, holiday, celebration, etc… As I review the results of my search I will be selecting pictures that are evocative of the culture. Printing these pictures will be the next step. Teacher’s tip: if possible laminate the pictures. They will hold up considerably better after lamination.

Shuffle the pictures together so that Chinese and Mexican pictures are randomly piled together. I gather the class and begin explaining our challenge. “I will be giving each of you a picture. You can look at the picture but do your best to hide it from your neighbors for right now.” I will then distribute one picture to each child. When everyone has a picture we are ready for describing the activity.

I deliver the directions in a manner that sounds similar to this set of instructions. “When I say go you will be able to show your picture to other students. Your challenge is to compare pictures with your classmates. Try to find pictures that you think belong together. You are going to get into groups that go together. When you are all done sit together with your team. Here’s a hint, when you are all done and everyone is sitting with a team there should be two teams. The teams may not have the same amount of students in them. Go.”

Chaos will now ensue. At least it looks that way. I have done blind sorts during formal observations before and have been told that it looks disorganized but that the class is excited, engaged, and thinking. Brace yourself! It also gets a little loud. I don’t set a timer for this sorting. I do circulate throughout the students listening to discussions. Students will be justifying their thinking throughout the sorting. They will be having disagreements, helping each other decide which group to join, and thinking, thinking, thinking.

Once everyone is seated in a group I collect and display all the pictures together for each team, one team at a time. We can then have a discussion in which kids will explain their picture and talk about why it fits with their chosen team. If the team cannot agree that a picture belongs, we can discuss it together. If they are still not certain it may be best to set that picture aside in a special location until we can make a decision at a later time. This would be an excellent time to introduce a graphic organizer. I could create a giant web or T-Chart and place the pictures right into the organizer itself. I would create one organizer for Chinese culture and a separate for Mexican culture. This method of organization will make it simpler to identify the individual “ingredients” and the “recipe” for culture.

Our discussion will now revolve around the pictures. Some probing questions might be: What kinds of things do you see in the picture? And, why do you think these pictures fit together? Through these discussions we will begin to develop a sense of those “ingredients” of culture. As the “recipe” for culture becomes less murky, we build knowledge of culture and come closer to our definition.

I will repeat this same sorting activity with different pictures at the conclusion of our unit. In this way I should be able to assess the learning that has taken place. I expect that the process of sorting would be much smoother and the students’ accuracy in pairing pictures together improved. I could adapt this second sorting to assess individual students by creating a worksheet of pictures to sort and make it an individual assignment.

Activity Two: “Readings: Questions and Answers”

The crux of this unit is the pairing of texts for the purpose of offering the students a deeper understanding of culture. To this end, I will be looking for commonalities between the texts I tie together. As I read the books to the class, they will have two distinct jobs. Foremost, they will focus on the content of the readings. They will actively engage with the story or text. To keep the level of engagement high, I will ask probing questions throughout the readings. A second focus, which is important for our defining of culture, is the seeking out of those “ingredients” of culture. At the conclusion of each reading we will pull forth the identified “ingredients” and add them to our graphic organizers from the previous activity. As, some pairings will be multicultural, it will be important to always have the students determine whether the new element should be added to the Chinese or Mexican organizer.

Probing Questions

During the readings, I will ask a series of probing questions and encourage students to ask questions of their own about what they have heard. This “ask and answer” routine will directly address language arts CCSS. It makes the children think. It forces them to mentally attend during the readings. It will allow them a better understanding of the content shared.

Areas of focus for the questions could be the narrative elements (characters, setting, and plot) of a story. For example; why do you think Maria wore her mother’s ring? What do you notice about the setting in this picture? In a nonfiction piece, this focus shifts to key details from the text. Why is food left on the altars of ancestors during the Day of the Dead ceremonies? What are some ways the community celebrates Cinco de Mayo?

Unknown vocabulary frequently appears in reading activities. This will be especially true while studying other cultures. When a word like ye-ye is included in a story. It is an opportunity to dig deeper into the Chinese culture. Asking and answering questions about new vocabulary is also in the CCSS.

Asking questions that lead the children to make connections is important. Questions like; how is a fiesta like a birthday party? How is it different? serve multiple purposes. They help the children better relate the reading to themselves. They also explore how different human settlements are connected. That relates to social studies standards.

Pairing Texts

As every teacher will likely have access to different reading materials for use with their class, I won’t take much space addressing my specific materials. What I will do is give an overview of how I will be pairing materials together with a few specific examples.

Seminar leader Brantley often linked fiction and nonfiction in our topics of discussion. We would read an article detailing the history and current state of feminism and then follow it up with a discussion of a picture book with feminist overtones. In this way I was engaged on multiple levels with the learning. Following that model, I will be linking the novel In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson with the informative text Chinese New Year: A Festival of New Beginnings. Through these readings the students will feel the experience of Shirley Temple Wong while they are also thinking about facts of the holiday from the nonfiction text.

Seminar leader Brantley also paired similar texts together to aid in my learning. The Declaration of Independence and the Communist Manifesto are, in form, very similar documents. Although they are similar their message is radically different. By pairing two similar pieces together the messages from each were underscored for me. I too will pair similar text together to examine the differences. Adelita: A Mexican Cinderella Story and Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China are both versions of the classic Cinderella story. They are exceedingly similar. Because of how alike they are the differences will stand out. Those differences are because of the cultures in which the tales are set.

Defining Culture

At the end of the readings I will lead the students in an examination of our graphic organizers. We will list the different “ingredients” of culture and develop our classroom definition of the concept. I will guide students to defining cultures as the way a group of people live. Reminding the kids to be wary of stereotypes would be appropriate at this time.

Activity Three: “Recipe Writing”

Nonfiction Informational Writing

The students will begin this activity by choosing either the Mexican or Chinese culture. They will then be creating a booklet focused on the “ingredients” of that particular culture. The booklet will include a cover, and one page per “ingredient” that we discussed in class. Likely, the book will be five or six pages in length.

The cover is to include a title (perhaps Chinese culture), the author’s name, and a full color picture (illustration, photograph, magazine clipping, or printout from the internet) that would be appropriate for such a book. Each page will include a colored picture featuring an “ingredient” of culture and a sentence that describes the picture. For example, if the student drew a picture of a Chinese Dragon they may write a sentence relating how dragons often appear during Spring Festival parades.

Kindergarten students’ writing will include a combination of pictures, dictation, and words. I would also expect that most if not all of the “ingredients” in the student book will come directly from our graphic organizers constructed over the course of the unit.

This book could be created in the traditional manner with paper, pencil, and art supplies. However, it could be completed using an I-Pad app such as Bookabi. The use of technology during this writing process would greatly increase the excitement factor for some children.

Fiction Writing

The student will also write a story that showcases one of the cultures. The story will include at least one character, a setting, and an event. I would expect that this story will be at least a paragraph including details that could indicate the culture. To complement the text, students will create an illustration that goes along with their writing.

An example might be that “Tad went to a parade. In the parade Tad saw many skeletons and skulls. After the parade Tad went home and put some food near a picture of his great grandmother. Tad has fun on the Day of the Dead.”

Again, this writing could be completed with paper, pencil, and crayons or possibly using an I-Pad app like Bookabi.