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Teaching Day-by-Day: Language
Our focus this month is on language, which includes all the many ways in which people and animals communicate with each other.
- Week One - Getting Started
- Have your class look up the words language and communication in a dictionary to find out what they mean. Make a list of all the different languages and second languages you and the students in your class speak. Make a list of the ways we communicate.
- Ask students to survey their families, friends and neighbors to find the languages they speak and from which countries they hail. Add these to your list. Talk about why many different spoken languages exist and what language does for a culture.
- Find out where the closest Native American tribe is located and the language they speak. Arrange to have a member come to visit the class to teach the students a few words in his or her language.
- Search the term cave drawings on the Internet. Visit www.culture.gouv.fr to see pictures from the Cave of Lascaux in France and talk with students about the roles of storytelling and cave art in early cultures.
- Have your class create beautiful cave drawings by following the directions found at familyfun.go.com and then have them tell their own stories to the class.
- For homework tonight, have students look up the words petroglyph and pictograph. First, help them discover meanings that morphemes provide – petro=rock, picto=picture, graph=write or draw and glyph=carve. You can find these by searching Greek and Latin Roots on the Internet.
- Read the book The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone: Key to Ancient Egypt by James Cross Giblin (Scott Foresman, 1993) to your class. Help them discover some of the first ancient Egyptian writing called hieroglyphs and how scientists broke the code of the Rosetta Stone.
- Visit the website www.gutenberg.de with your students to help them learn about the first German printing press, why it was invented and how it was used.
- Ask the art teacher to do woodblock printing or potato prints with your students to give them an idea of what the original printing process was all about.
- Ask students to research early Native American language and define smoke signals and Universal Indian Sign Language. They can get started at www.inquiry.net.
- Discover the language of art. Read Jon Scieszka's The Stinky Cheese Man (Viking, 2002), illustrated by Lane Smith. Before reading the story, examine the pictures and talk about the messages the pictures communicate about this story. Does the text reflect the pictures? Vote.
- Compare the artwork in The Stinky Cheese Man to the art in Lynne Cherry's A River Ran Wild (Voyager Books, 2002). Look at Cherry's illustrations first to see what messages they convey, then read the text. Compare this realism with the surrealism and fantasy in Scieszka's work.
- Discuss the origins of rap music by reading The History of Rap Music by Cookie Lommell (Chelsea House, 2001). Your students may also enjoy M.C. Turtle and the Hip Hop Hare by David Vozar (Bantam Books, 1997), a rap retelling of Aesop's fable about the tortoise and the hare.
- Write a rap
with your students. First, read a book of fables like Fables by Arnold Lobel (HarperCollins, 1980) and then have the class choose a favorite story to rewrite in rap form. Students form small groups to write their own raps and share them with the class. - Read the book,
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein (HarperCollins, 1981) to your students. The poems are short, humorous and about everyday things. Brainstorm a list of topics to write about and have the students write and illustrate their own poems. - Ask your music teacher to teach a lesson on the language of music and how different instruments in an orchestra communicate various moods and feelings depending on sound, tone, meter and timbre.
- Play the game "Making Words" with the word communicate. Students work in pairs to make as many small words as they can by rearranging the letters. Hint: they should be able to make at least 20 words.
- Learn about net lingo. Ask students if they know about im (instant messaging – an abbreviated language used for online chats) and terms they know in IM. Go to www.netlingo.com for a dictionary of IM terms like LOL, TTYL, NP.
- Pair students and invite them to write notes to a buddy using the im terms they have learned. After they've created their note, have them swap and each buddy write the standard English translation of the IM.
- Teach students pig latin. On the blackboard, show how syllables are turned around in pig latin and model it orally. Pair students so they can use pig latin with each other. Talk about why different languages and forms of language have developed.
- Read the books The Whale's Song by Dyan Sheldon (Puffin, 1997), Whale's Passing by Eve Bunting (Blue Sky Press, 2003) or another story about the language of whales. Discuss how and why other animals communicate with each other and us.
- Visit the website www.cs.ucf.edu to see pictures of whales and dolphins and to learn about how these animals make the sounds that allow them to talk to each other.
- Hear the language of the Bottlenose Whale, Sperm Whale, Bottlenose Dolphin and others at neptune.atlantis-intl.com Why do the students think sounds and hearing are so important for these animals?
- Brainstorm and list the slang words your students currently use. Make a list of slang terms that are "out" now and talk about how and why the English language changes. Share some of the slang you used when you were younger.
- Invite a local radio or television personality to visit your classroom. Beforehand, make a list of language and job-related questions to ask your guest. Compose a class thank-you note after the visit.
- Invite the speech teacher to talk to your students about how sounds are created and received by humans. Ask him or her to teach your students some tongue-twisters!
- Teach students to fingerspell. Find an animated ASL (American Sign Language) fingerspelling alphabet at asl.ms/ Go to http://library.thinkquest.org to print copies of the ASL alphabet. How does it help people communicate?
- Invite the ESL teacher to talk about the difficulties faced by speakers of other languages as they learn English. Be sure to focus on how ESL speakers enrich our classrooms and what they can teach native English speakers and vice versa.
- Using collage art materials, have students make pictures to represent the many things language means to them. Share the pictures in small groups and post them on a bulletin board or in the hall.
- Plan an open mic session in which each student has a chance to read a poem or story they created about what they learned this month about language. Practice first using a microphone and invite parents or another class to this event.
Week Two - History
Week Three - Poetry, Art and Music
Week Four - Unique Forms
Week Five - More about Language
Karen Bromley is a Professor of Literacy in the School of Education and Human Development at Binghamton University in Binghamton, NY where she teaches graduate courses in literacy, language arts and children's literature.
April, 2004, Vol.34, No.7
