Rationale
My fourth grade ELD class lacks two important advantages, Navajo Cultural studies and comprehension. At the fourth grade level, there is a huge emphasis on developing reading comprehension skills. This is especially challenging for my fourth grade students who for the most part lack reading skills. Most of the students I teach are behind 2-3 grade levels in reading. Almost every year, I spend the first quarter of the school year re-teaching phonics, and foundational reading skills. The students also lack English Language grammar skills. In any case, despite the students’ below grade level reading, by mandate reading comprehension skills do need to be developed at grade four. My unit will use various modification and graphic organizers to help students develop reading comprehension.
English has become a prevalent language on the Navajo reservation due to influences of the western society through multimedia including movies, television, music, and magazines that promote “pop” culture. Many young adults and children have grown up with English as their primary language. However, the English spoken at home is not fluent, but rather “playground” English that includes slang and makeshift broken English. Their English also uses Navajo Language patterns and parts of speech that sound incoherent to a Standard English speaker (this is called code switching). A majority of the students at the Elementary School fall into this category: their first language is English, yet it’s not fluent English.
Despite the decline in the number of fluent Navajo speakers, Navajo culture is still thriving. Driving down any highway on the Navajo reservation, sheepherders can be seen tending to their flocks or cowboys caring for their herds. Vendors set up shop by the side of the road to sell turquoise jewelry, or traditional food, and occasionally Navajo woven rugs, or baskets.
In my unit, I will be focusing on story, plot and character motivation as way to teach reading comprehension. I will be using Navajo Oral stories, specifically Changing Bear Maiden, as a foundation for my unit on Shakespeare. Many students are familiar with stories of the Navajo Oral Histories, because some parents, grandparents, and especially grandparents love to tell stories in the winter time. Many Navajo Oral Histories have numerous plots, character traits, and motivations embedded within the stories. Many of the plots and twists are traditionally used as tools for learning. I chose Changing Bear Maiden as the Navajo Oral story for my unit because it has numerous plots, character traits, and motivations that were very similar to those features in Shakespeare. There is love, betrayal, and tragedy involved in both stories. The maiden falls in love with Coyote despite her initial rebuff of him, but tries to hide the affair. Although Coyote had the good intention of staying married to the maiden in the beginning, he eventually betrays her by allowing himself to get killed due to his foolish behavior. The maiden’s brothers have had to accept the Coyote despite their distaste for him. When Coyote annoyed the brothers, the only thing they could was redirect him towards his wife. Although the brothers did not kill the Coyote, the maiden believed that the brothers were somehow responsible for her husband’s demise. She killed most of her brothers as part of her plan for revenge. The youngest brother however, survives and ends up killing his sister to stop her devastating rampage.
Because any Shakespeare play, whether it’s Romeo and Juliet or any other, is complicated for any fourth grade class, I opted to use Graphic Novel versions of Taming of the Shrew and Othello. The quick text version translates the whole play into quick modern English. Since fourth grade is very early for Shakespeare, I will be using simplified English Version of the graphic novels. Although the graphics novels do not have the original text from the play, they do retain the most important plot twists, and character traits and motivations. These characteristics of the graphic Novels will allow students to have better comprehension. For the visual learners, as well as for students who are not familiar with the setting, the graphics enhances the stories by showing the characters in action.
Three types of graphic organizers will be used to help students with comprehension. The first graphic organizer will be a Venn diagram. The Venn diagram will help students compare and contrast the two stories. The second graphic organizer is a character trait and motivation chart. This chart organizes a character’s action to determine their motivation. The third chart is the story element chart to determine the plot development in each story.
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