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My task this year is to guide my Kindergarten English Learners (EL Students) to find their voices within themselves, to express themselves freely and to reclassify into the General Education Population. I chose to use ekphrastic poetry to support and guide my students, to build their confidence and ensure they are efficiently equipped to voice their thoughts. Using texts of a foreign language (English), my students will be able to easily pick up the vocabulary through mini-lessons in order to practice the tasks of verbal exchange. Being part of a culture that does not voice their thoughts without first approaching what they want to say with a holistic approach, my students will need routine modeling. Another reason to use poems connected with pictures in my unit is to indicate to my students that their thought process is a very important part of the writing process. As you may already know, English Learners usually are reluctant to share within their classroom environments because the sentence structure in English is the reverse of what it is in Navajo. The sentences that are created in the Navajo mindset become jumbled when the words are translated into English. The possessive pronouns of Navajo are always prefixed to the noun: for example, shima, nima, bima and nihima; it is never just -ma. The structure of the Navajo verb has similar characteristics, but is more complex. The subject of the sentence is always incorporated in the verb with a pronominal form, and other verbal elements. Ideas of time and mode are likewise incorporated in the verb, and auxiliary verbs such as will, did, have, might, etc. do not occur in Navajo. The ideas conveyed by these independent words in English are expressed by different forms of the verb itself in Navajo. The sentence structure looks like this in English: SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT; and Navajo sentence structure look like this: SUBJECT-OBJECT-VERB.
In a safe environment, students will learn to speak freely as they acquire English language skills and move up into the upper grade levels.
My School
I will be working with students who have very little exposure to the English Language and are still developing their vocabulary. Most of the students have attended a Bilingual Head-start Program here on the vast Navajo Nation. Although they are attending school they are being taught using the Navajo language and very little in English, so most often their English is very limited and they usually speak it with major grammatical errors. The majority of my students will be coming to school from more rural areas. They will be coming from farmlands and traveling for more than an hour on the school transportation. There are two sets of buses that transport the students into our school campus. Some students board the bus as early as five o’clock in the morning and get home as late as six o’clock in the evening. The surrounding communities stretch out in all directions for about fifty miles from the school campus. The Kindergarten class size varies every year. Students who enroll into our school systems are given a PHOLE Form to verify what language is most spoken within the household. If the PHOLE chart shows that the Navajo language is spoken in the household the child is given the AZELLA placement test. Depending on how well the student preforms they are placed into either the EL Class or the General Education Population. When they are classified as [] EL student[s] the goal for the student and teacher from then on is to get the student to reclassify into the general education population. As they move forward these students will be monitored for two school years to ensure the success of the transition. These Navajo traditional students will have a different way of learning from the more urban students. They follow the four-step Traditional Ways of Learning. Nitsahakees: the process of thinking and conceptualizing. Nahat’a: the process of planning inquiring, investigating, and experimenting. Iina: the process of applied learning, accomplishing, producing, performing, and publishing. Sihasin: the process of making critical affirmative action in thinking, planning, learning, thus becoming experienced, expert, and confident to adapt. My EL students will be very visual and holistic. Therefore, I strongly believe that using poems that involve pictures in my class will help students relate a work of art and a poem that accompanies it to their own lives so that the words of the poem have significatnt meaning. Having vivid illustrations would also provide my students with a better understanding of the words in the poems. Agt their very young age they will need more visual aids to guide their thought process. Having conveyed the significance of these words, passages or poems would then allow my students to turn to themselves and express their feelings through a verbal form. I would guide my students and show them how to identify the objects that bring meaning to the text and lead the reader to better understand the train of thought of the writer. My plan is to use one poem a week for my students to analyze, creating a recurrent routine of self-expression. When the students are ready for the challenge the texts would become more frequent. I would like to have my students have an open discussion among themselves and complete a compare and contrast graphic organizer poster to share with their peers. At this time I would start introducing art work by either physically having it displayed in the classroom, beaming it in via internet or through pictures on a PowerPoint presentation. Because they are located in a rural area, having the art work from the outside “world” would show my students that the world is bigger than they think and is not scary to explore through writing and art. I would start my unit by using Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes. Most editions of these nursery rhymes have terrific graphics that children can relate to their everyday lives, memorable images that stay in the mind. I choose to start with nursery rhymes also because these are verses my students would be exposed to in their homes or in an Early Head-start classroom. I strongly believe that using fun, fanciful poems that pair with imagery with the same elements would capture the imaginations of my students. I would like to implant “easy reading and easy writing” of poetry so in the future my students will be able to express themselves in their own writing, with little hardship and without concern about what others think of how they think.
Ekphrastic Poetry
Ekphrastic poems are usually written from a poet’s perspective while viewing art work. The visual object could be presented in a three dimensional (sculptural or ceramic) form, as for instance in Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn. Keats wrote the five stanzas of ten lines each, inventing a vase after having seen a collection of them. In a culture like ours that has beautiful objects of cultural significance that can be brought into the classroom, it is good to know that from poet’s point of view the object can be small enough to fit in the palm of a child’s hand or as huge as a building.
While reading any poem the reader must be aware of the poet’s culture and historical period. Most poets write what they feel about what is happening to and around them in a certain moment of time. Like the art work being viewed in ekphrasis, the poem freezes time briefly before leading you through time either forward to the present or keeping you dwelling in the past. The poet’s vocabulary, which may be unfamiliar, the reader must pay attention to. For my students there are terms in the Mother Goose poems that will be strange to them but exciting for them to learn. Ekphrastic poets also respond to color tones to set the mood of their poems.
The poets also have a deep understanding of the art work they are writing about. The poet makes you observe the art work with more focus and is able to transport you to the past. My students’ reading comprehension skill will still be very low so bringing in actual ekphrastic poems would be too much of a challenge. That is why I have chosen Mother Goose poems. When I present the work of art that goes with the poems I want my students to be able to express what they see. I want them to tell me what they think is happening in the picture and to use that information to draw conclusions. I would have to explain why visual accompniment to a poem is helpful, and how we are taking advange of poems that are illustrated to get ready for the the writing they are expected to do. I would explain that (in the case of ekphrasis, which we are not starting with) the poems are from the point of view of the poet looking at the artwork and that the poet is describing what’s happening in the artwork. At some point I would show some pictures and read [aloud] the ekphrastic poems that go with them via the internet. The poems I would like to focus on, though, are Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes.
There is another element I would practice with my student[s:] to identify rhyming words within the poems. Being able to identify rhyming words and use word families could also help students to create their own lines for their poems. Using word families would also increase vocabulary.
Technology
My classroom has the typical equipment every class would have. A chalkboard and dry erase board with circular tables which seat four students. The new addition is a Smart Screen TV. A smart TV, sometimes referred to as connected TV or hybrid TV, is a television set with integrated Internet and interactive "Web 2.0" features. Smart TV is a technological convergence between computers and flat-screen television sets and set-top boxes. This TV is able to connect to the internet in order to allow all the students to focus on one screen. This technology benefits the teacher when leading the classes with visual aids and guiding students through lessons. It will help with my unit. The Smart Screen TV is necessary because personal laptops are in short supply. The school district internet usage policy imposes a block on the website I have found that provides images and poems, but I will have requested that the Superintendent of Schools or the Associate Superintendent of Educational Services allow my teacher computer to link onto the following web page: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/432978951649713475/ . The website is https://www.pinterest.com/ which has more pictures if you need to adjust the images to fit your class maturity. My classroom is also equipped with a projector that can be connected to my laptop to show PowerPoint Presentations. I would have to create a slide show while utilizing an unblocked wireless internet connection.
Mother Goose
Mother Goose is a fictional character who emerged from a poem written by unknown authors. The poets who created Mother Goose then created musical lyrics or patterned word sounds for children to memorize more easily. Children recited these poems to practice pronouncing certain problematic phonemic sounds and blends. Some of the verses also concerned events or tasks that people passed down orally. At the time not everyone was able to write so oral stories were told in hopes that the generations to come would have a sense of the past. Just as the telephone game is played with a group of children somewhere along the line and the words start out differently because they have been forgotten, or replaced for lack of phonemic skills, the poems we have today are not in their original state. Originally the poems I have chosen were written with different words. Over the generations and the different cultures sharing them [with] their young ones the words have changed to accommodate more modern references and situations. I have chosen to use more modern versions since my students are just now learning English. To have several variants would cause confusion.
Shonto Begay
There are many artists born and raised on the Navajo Reservation whom I would like to introduce to my students. These artists know the lives of my students because they came from similar homes and family teachings. The artist that is nearest to my school is named Shonto Begay. Born near Shonto, Arizona, to a Navajo medicine man and rug weaver, storyteller and artist Shonto Begay draws on his Navajo background to write and illustrate books for children and adults. He earned an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts. Begay is the author of The Mud Pony (1988), winner of the Owl Award for Illustration; Ma’ii and Cousin Horned Toad (1991); and Navajo: Visions and Voices Across the Mesa (1995). He illustrated The Magic of Spider Woman (1996), among others. He has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Canyon Road Arts, Western Art Collector, Warrior’s Voice, and Arizona Daily Sun, and his art has been exhibited in solo shows across the country, including the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and the American Indian Contemporary Arts Museum. (The painting that I am showing to my students is the one where the grandmother is herding sheep into a canyon. The painting appears to show a scene as it would look like during the Livestock Reduction the Navajo experienced. “The Federal Government came to Navajo homesteads on the Navajo Reservations and ordered the families to get rid of more than half of their herds due to over grazing lands. When grandmothers heard the soldiers were coming closer to their homes they would chase their flocks into the canyons to hide and save them. Some ladies did not have family who were younger to help so they had to push themselves to the limits mentally and physically just to keep their precious sheep and goats, their way of lives were literally on the line.” (Gladys Denny). The painting will appear to be entertaining through the eyes of my students because they will be able to picture and describe their grandmothers running through the riverbeds after a light summer storm. The painting is located at the following web address https://diattaart.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/awesome-acrylic-artist-series-shonto-begay/#jp-carousel-4473. The painting is named “ Between Sanctuaries”.
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