"In order to infer, readers must lift up the words and go beneath them."
~ from The Mosaic of Thought Keene and Zimmerman (1997)

The CLUE students and I had an interesting discussion today about the use of dialect in a novel we are reading orally in class.

We spent a period reading from "Money Hungry" by Sharon G. Flake.

http://tinyurl.com/yi3y


We have been reading this book for several weeks. It's about a girl name Raspberry who lives in a housing project for the poor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Raspberry and her mother (a single parent) spent some time living on the street and the experience has caused Raspberry to be fixated on making and saving money. She is terrified that some day she will end up on the street again so she is always cooking up ways to make more money. She has $600.000 stashed away in her room at home. The students have been very taken with this story and they authentic way in which it is portrayed.

When I finished reading today, one of the students commented on how much she was enjoying the book and how she didn't think she'd enjoy it as much if she had to read it to herself, due to the dialect. There is a significant amount of dialect in this book. Raspberry's language is full of slang, southern dialect and colloquialisms. It is actually a bit of a challenge for me to read it out loud. The rest of the students agreed but added that it was the dialect that made the story so believable and intriguing. Someone said that the dialect is what makes Raspberry, Raspberry. This started a discussion about the use of dialect in novels and even the use of "thee" and "thou" in the King James version of the Bible. The students talked about how dialogue often stopped them from reading a book. I told them that in Grade 10 they will be reading "To Kill a Mockingbird", a novel set in the deep south and full of southern dialect. As I said this it occurred to me that Money Hungry is a good preparation for a book like "To Kill a Mockingbird" or even Shakespeare and that perhaps we don't "work up to" giving students reading containing dialect, slang or colloquialisms so that when we do, they are overwhelmed (my Grade 10 daughter found the southern dialect so tough to understand in To Kill a Mockingbird, that she rented the movie!).

Today I photocopied two chapters from "Money Hungry" for the students to read on their own. (note: photocopy law allows photocopying of 10% of a book...which in the case of "Money Hungry", is three chapters). I have posted some thought-provoking questions on the students' Blogs- they will respond to these questions on the Blogs as well. I think the students will find the dialect easier to read because now they are used to how Raspberry speaks. I periodically stop while reading aloud to the studnets, to clarify an unfamiliar word or slang phrase. In one of these chapters it will address how Raspberry's mother is trying to eliminate the slang from her talk so that she will fit into a higher class world. This will make for some interesting discussion about the assumptions we make about a person's intelligence or social position based on how they speak. It reminds me of the movie "Sweet Home Alabama" in which one of the main characters tells someone that "just because I speak slow, doesn't mean I am slow".

Listening to these students interact with each other is interesting. Yesterday they were doing some Internet research for our upcoming debate on the criminalization of the homeless. Talk about collaboration. They were hanging over each others' shoulders helping locate info and discussing the search terms that would get them the most useful sites. One girl ran off an extra copy of an article she found that asked the question "Is Panhandling Moral?". She thought one of her CLUE peers may be able to use it in their debate preparation.


Yesterday, one student asked what my opinion was about the criminalization of the homeless. When I told him that I had several seemingly opposing opinions (and shared why) the student said "so there's not a "right" answer to our debate question?" (the debate question is: should homeless people be fined for loitering or panhandling?). One of the students who was listening to our discussion said..." And that's likely why we are doing the debate- so we see there are valid parts to everyone's point of view."
That's exactly why...the students need to understand that solutions come from scanning (to borrow a Matt Taylor term), all aspects of an issue.

Two boys presented their Advocay Project last Friday. It wa san especially meaty Powerpoint. I was very impressed with their ability to not only include powerful data in their PowerPoint, but to communicate it in sucha moving manner. Their questions didn't allow the viewer to passively watch the data...it called for action. I often hear how "PowerPointlessness" is rampant in our classrooms...this was truly was Powerpoint...with a point! Here's a link to it (note:
use the full screen view icon at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen so the animation works).

http://www.masters.ab.ca/bdyck/Homeless/Studentwork/Calgary/Advocacy/James/What%20If..final%20copy_files/frame.htm

These students love to discuss. They frequently bemoan the fact that CLUE will be over for them at the end of January. Yesterday they talked about why they feel this way. They said they have felt their thinking challenged. They haven't necessarily felt they've had to work harder, but that they've had to "think" harder. Maybe that's why Tom March says that effective technology integration is actually thinking integration.
Interesting...

Student work and stories from classrooms participating in "The Eleanor Rigby Project" is starting to roll in- classes from Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi and Illinois. My students have begun to email the students from Mississippi and next week they will
have a bulletin board discussion about the "criminalization of the homeless".

Today I posted the student work from Inverness, Mississippi, a poor rural area populated predominantly by minorities (the response of my students to this statement was "If they are the majority, then why are they called minorities?). The teacher sent poetry and a few pictures. I can't tell you how it warmed my heart to see those kids working on mind maps and affinity diagrams, something they had never done before. After exchanging emails, the students from Mississippi are wondering what "tobogganing" is and my students are wondering what on earth, "catfish crops" are. One student received an email telling them that there is a "cotton gin" right smack in the middle of their town. My students had no clue what that was either. Discussion, discussion, discussion! The teacher from Inverness said
he gave his students clues and "soon had them discovering the world of tobogganing".

It snowed today in Calgary and my kids want me to take digital pictures of them making "snow angels" for their friends in the balmy south! Both sets of students are scurrying off to a temperature converter tool (found on the Internet) so they can convert Celsius to Fahrenheit or vice versa, so they know exactly how cold it is in Calgary or how hot it gets in Inverness in August. We were told that the students from Mississippi were surprised to learn that French was mostly spoken only in the province of Quebec and commented that it will be fun and challenging for them to learn why this is so.
Student interest is at an all time high! Their work went live today on the Eleanor Rigby web site. Here is the URL :

http://www.masters.ab.ca/bdyck/Homeless/Studentwork/Inverness/index.html

To top this off, I received an email from a 6th grade teacher who teaches 6th grade in Chelsea, Michigan (about an hour west of Detroit) who explained how she implemented The Eleanor Rigby Project with her students. I couldn't believe how she had taken this project and flown with it. Here is what they did:

- We spent one class period creating the affinity charts and discussing the results. The next day we created mind maps. Students were totally invested in both of these activities.

- Students took the Homeless Survey home over the weekend, and the following Tuesday we discussed the results, THEN we read the top 10 myths, from the Ann Arbor Shelter Association (linked from the Eleanor Rigby site).

-We read, discussed, and outlined the America's Homeless Children article.

- I shared statistics on rent payments in this area, and as a class we did the math on the income needed to provide for a family.

- We discussed the many and varied causes of homelessness, from manufacturing jobs going overseas to mental problems to other
causes.

- I shared the personal experience of my own family helping a Navajo family whose house had burned, and information from books about the homeless borrowed from the local libraries.

- I read selections from "Monkey Island" by Paula Fox.

- Students created and shared "I Am" poems, with piano music as background.

- I had sent home a note about the Homeless Unit, as well as an opportunity to serve a meal at Alpha House, an interfaith-based shelter for homeless families in Ann Arbor. On Tuesday, December 2, sixteen students with their parents and siblings provided a potluck
dinner for the guests at the shelter. After dinner the students read to young guests and played in the "game room."

- More than one family asked when we could do this again. Thank you for telling us about the Eleanor Rigby Project. I will do it again!

Funny how yesterday I felt somewhat wired and tired, because today I am definitely "wired and inspired"!