Class Plan -- Unit One, Day 15

Class Plan -- Unit One, Day 15

Goals

Collect Response Essays.
Start thinking about personal experiences with learning school language.
Begin synthesizing the essays we've read so far, discussing the way they relate to one another.
Pull central, overlapping issues/questions out of this collection of readings on "home vs. school language."

Assignment for Day 16
Reading - (Go over the list of issues/questions we generated today before you begin this reading.) In LL, Mike Rose, "The Politics of Remediation" (135-49)

Writing - Answer #1-4 under "Working with the Text" on p. 150; then jot a quick paragraph or two discussing how the essay relates to one or more of the questions/issues on the list we put together in class today.

COLLECT RESPONSE ESSAYS.

Activities
Daily - Have students read Paul Pacentrilli,"How to Sound Erudite" (LL, 171-2) silently. (Believe it or not, you might want to hint to them that the essay is indeed sarcastic in tone.) Then have them write for a few minutes in response to a prompt which asks them to recall some of the "rules" they have been taught when learning school language.

Discussion - Discuss their daily responses as a large group, moving from a conversation about specific rules students learned to a more general discussion of the fact that the academy (school/university) has certain conventions that a person must learn in order to be an "insider." (Incidentally, you might want to note that not all of the "rules" that we learn are set in stone. We often find out later on that these rules change when we move from one class to another, or from one teacher to another.) Obviously, most of the authors we have read so far deal in some way with this broad issue of having to learn the language of school. We've talked about these readings individually, but how do they relate to one another? How do they all participate in this conversation about the issues involved in learning school language?

Daily.One way of entering into this discussion might be to have students write in response to a second daily prompt, something like the following: What would the author of the essay you wrote your Response paper about say in response to the following questions: What kinds of language are most valued in school? How does personal or private language use differ from school language? What challenges does this difference present? Or, if you find that school language doesn't present you with any particular challenges, how would you explain that?

Discussion of this daily will help you to move into a general discussion of how SOME of the readings so far address the central questions students will be dealing with in the Inquiry Essay. However, you will probably want to encourage them to think about other readings (Tannen, Lockett, Mundari, etc.) which could answer this question just as well. Eventually, you will also want to move students toward more SPECIFIC articulations of this home vs. school language issue, by encouraging them to pull central, overlapping issues/questions out of the collection of readings they have digested. Ideally, this list should consist of issues that they will find easily applicable to their own experiences. You will want to come to class with a list of a few issues/questions that you have found recurring in the readings. You can use a couple of these to get the ball rolling in discussion, but the students should ultimately be the ones responsible for generating this list. (You might ask them to write a list down if they are having trouble coming up with ideas off the top of their heads.) Here are some issues/questions that you could possibly include:

How does learning the language of school change the way people see themselves?
What are the benefits of learning school language?
What effects does it have on their various types of identity (family, cultural, religious, class, etc.)?
To what extent is it possible for people to preserve and make use of their home language when it is drastically different from the language of school? How do people keep family relationships and cultural identity in tact in these situations?
When there is a broad gap between students' home language and the language of school, who has the larger responsbility to bridge that gap--the teacher or the student? [i.e., Tannen, Rodriguez]
Is knowing the school language worth the costs that sometimes accompany it?
If school language doesn't present certain people with any particular challenge, how can that be explained [Jung]

Record on an OH transparency the issues/questions that are generated, so that you can use them in the next class.

Explain assignment for next class.