Comida et Cafe Culture

February 26, 2010

There has recently been a great deal of discussion about fine dining in our middle school language classes. French students are engaged in conversations and small skits about eating in French cafés, and Spanish students have researched recipes and traditional foods in Spain and Argentina. All of this talk about food has occurred in the language of study, providing the students with authentic topics and building their vocabulary and grammar skills. Madame Friborg described the approach in broad terms, commenting “we are teaching cultural literacy.”

Throughout our language program, students are introduced to the daily lives and environments of people in other parts of the world. Most units of study present scenarios that would occur in France, Spain, Mexico, Sengal, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Argentina, and other places where French and Spanish are spoken. Our students’ sense of themselves as global citizens grows with each lesson. Madame Friborg noted that the point of learning language is to be able to put oneself into the shoes of another person; this emphasis on respect is an essential element in making meaningful connections with people of any culture.

Our curriculum addresses much more than food. In 6th and 7th grade Spanish classes, Señora Marinez begins the study of each new country with short research projects. Students investigate local customs, forms of entertainment, sports, clothing, architecture, and famous landmarks. They present their findings in a sharing session, practicing their new vocabulary and building their knowledge about the location. Last week, they mounted a display of posters in the hallway outside the media lab. Take a look at the recipes for paella, the description of flamenco, and the presentation about Antoni Gaudi’s architecture.

The 7th and 8th grade French classes exchange e-mails with pen pals in French-speaking countries. We have established a strong relationship with the Matenwa School in Haiti, and with a middle school outside Paris. Through their communications, students find many interesting differences as well as points of similarity. They were delighted to discover that the movie Avatar was as popular in France as it is in the United States. In their messages, students describe their school days, their social activities, and their hopes for the future, sharing their own lives and reading about the lives of their peers thousands of miles away. As they discussed the notes they received from the Parisian class, our BDS students wondered which attributes might be similar in middle schools everywhere, and which might be unique to France. Their curiosity and eagerness to use language as a means to connect with others is a critical step toward true cultural literacy.

What Color is History?

February 12, 2010

“I’m ready for you to write my memories,” a pre-K student announced to Ms. Kearney on Tuesday morning. He presented her with a large sheet of white paper that had been divided into quadrants, each labeled with the name of one of the seasons. Ms. Kearney listened carefully, transcribing his words into captions to accompany the colored slips of paper he had glued onto the sections of the page. “Blue is for when I go swimming in the pool,” he said, pointing to a teal rectangle. Around the room, groups of children sat at the work tables, arranging collages of colors to represent their own mental images of the seasons.

This scene provides a glimpse into a remarkable aspect of young children’s cognitive development; specifically, the structure of memory. To begin the activity, Ms. Kearney re-read a book that the children have come to love: Leo Leonni’s classic story Frederick, about a group of mice who work all year to store food and supplies for the winter. The hero of the story is the title character, who does not gather nuts and corn; rather, he collects words and images to share on cold nights. Frederick’s stories are rich in color and detail: “When he told them of the blue periwinkles, the red poppies in the yellow wheat, and the green leaves of the berry bush, they saw the colors as clearly as if they had been painted in their own minds,” says Leonni. The mice are cheered by the memories that Frederick calls forth, and his role as the historian is celebrated.

Our children also build memories by combining sensory experiences with language. Their season collages are filled with mental snapshots from their life stories, and the deceptively simple materials belie a complex symbolic process. As they get older, they will develop more and more sophisticated skills to organize their thoughts, but their work this week is an indicator of how much they already know about the formation of narrative. There is a story behind each slip of paper: “The yellow is my Grandpa’s dock,” mused one child. A blue strip on another collage represents “the bright blue sky on the way to New Hampshire.” A splash of purple is a reminder of the short-sleeved shirts of summer, and two gray stripes represent snow falling on a cloudy winter day.

The philosopher John Locke described memory as a power of the mind to revive past perceptions. As our youngest are learning, the ability to recall and retell details from the past is an important element in building the foundations of historical knowledge.

Bringing the Ancient World to Life

The 4th grade classroom was briefly renamed the “Cairo Conference Center” on Tuesday afternoon as the students prepared to host the Egyptian Symposium, a highlight of their social studies program. This event marks the culmination of several months’ investigation into the history and influence of ancient Egypt. The room was transformed into a lecture hall, featuring a panelists’ table and plenty of room for a large and well-informed audience.

Throughout the winter, each student has engaged in an independent research effort about a particular aspect of Egyptian culture, consisting of a written paper and a visual project. Model pyramids, trading cards, a Sphinx, a variety of posters, and other displays were in full view during the symposium, and exhibited with great pride by their creators. Many students studied similar topics. During the afternoon, panel groups took their turns in the speakers’ chairs to share their knowledge. A question session followed each panel. If one member of the group was unsure about the answer to a question, the rest of the panelists filled in details from their own research.

The symposium is the 4th graders’ first significant oral presentation, and Mrs. Holman took the opportunity to teach the students about the importance of delivering their information effectively. Voice, eye contact, and confidence in the material are all essential. She challenged them to be creative and to find ways of explaining what they had learned so that they could engage the audience as much as possible. Simply reading their research papers was not sufficient; the children were required to identify key points and speak from memory or from brief notecards.

Topics ranged from religion to arts to home life to architecture and toys and games in ancient Egypt (did you know that children have been playing with marbles as far back as 5000 years?) to a description of modern Cairo. One student, speaking about religion, took on the role of an important goddess and explained how all the other goddesses were related. Another member of her panel pointed out that Egyptian magic was not at all the same as Harry Potter magic. During a discussion of the pyramids, a student spoke from the point of view of Khufu’s pyramid, explaining the various items in his interior. In a presentation on the arts, a student brought a CD of music from Ancient Egypt, providing an audio accompaniment to her research.

Many of the students’ visual projects are on display in the library. Come and tour our own museum of ancient culture and find out how much our 4th graders have learned.