Concepts of Mapping

Today I was prepared to work with students to build the concept of mapping. Sara Fanelli's My Map Book is a wonderful resource for thinking about open concepts of maps. I have prepared the book with numerous post-its that will help me to remember the Spanish words for her captions. I feel like I am working just as hard to find the children’s natural home language vocabulary, as they are to understand mine.

I read the book to the children and they were very interested in the beautiful images and the variety of maps. Having the Spanish words for some of the features helped to lure them into the book. I also have a small collection of desk maps of the world, and a relief map of the United States. I have examples of neighborhood maps, and features of conventional maps. However, I wanted the students to feel free to map anything, which is what Sara Fanelli's book encourages. She maps her dog, her stomach, her bedroom, her day, etc... I was most interesting in seeing what their concept of maps looks like. 

The students were very interested in creating their own maps. I created a template for them with a place for a title. I wanted them to feel like the paper they were working with was a real space for a map. I used a border to create a boundary or frame for their drawing. They have colored pencils that they use daily and are in their pencil boxes. This was an ideal medium for their maps because they could include detail. They were encouraged to use as many captions as possible. Some students were eager to label everything in English, and others were more freely labeling in both languages. I wanted to encourage them to label in any language, to use writing as a vehicle for providing information on their maps. Fluency being the initial goal, I believe that the English can be emphasized more stringently later when I know more about what they are capable of producing. 

Their maps were varied. There were some excellent maps of the world.

One girl drew the world as a sphere had a lot of detail and color. She clearly saw the world and it’s features as a sphere with water and landforms.

One boy, who drew a sphere, labeled places he knows, including nearby towns and cities in his state of Sonora. He used a world map to include some other places, such as Russia, China, India. He wanted to fill all of the spaces with names of places; familiar and faraway, perhaps places he had heard of.

Another boy drew a map of the seaside, and although unfinished when photographed, one can see that he has a pretty clear concept of the landforms, landmarks, and a sense of place. He lives in a community that is near the beach, so it is likely a very familiar setting for his map. It appears to have quite a few details that he has recalled from his own experience.

As for non-traditional maps, there was a great map of a dog drawn by a girl who, according to her teacher, likes to draw perros as often as she can. She worked hard to label all of the elements of her dog map in both English and Spanish.

One of my favorite maps was completed by a girl, who sat quietly in the back of the room. Her idea was to create a map of her stomach. I think she must have thought about everything she had eaten in the past few days…lots of pollo (chicken), sandwiches, chocolate milk, and some unidentified foods written in Spanish. Her map was more of a record of activity over time in her stomach, perhaps including some of her favorite things. Included were three chiclés (gum), perhaps swallowed by mistake. 

 It would be fun to interview these children after they create their maps to ask them about them. This would be challenging with the time frame we have (fifty minutes). They did not complete their maps this time, and I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to see their completed ones.

 This was a great lesson because it allowed me to get to know the children a little better through understanding their perspectives visually and through their interests. They are very social and as soon as they know they are going to have the opportunity to work on some visual arts they slide their chairs into little groups and share spaces and materials. They seem to know where they want to be and how they prefer to be more productive. I was surprised by this, as I had expected them to be more passive, in response to what I thought would be a more structured environment. This was my paradigm – that in Mexico, classrooms are more structured. Perhaps this may be true in some places, but here there appears to be some freedom as to how the teachers want to structure their classroom environments. Allowing them to be free to work this way allows me to get to know them in a more natural way. Their teachers sees that they are social and as a new teacher is learning some strategies to reinforce productivity. She also sees that this particular group gets excited about change, and when faced with a different instructor, or teaching style, they get very excited. This is no different from my own experience with elementary school children in the United States. Particularly in an open setting.

   I will be gone for two weeks, but when I return, I want to align my lesson with what they are learning in the classroom, and start to challenge myself to build the arts into a structured curriculum. Their teacher, Rosa, has told me that it is great for them to have this on Friday, as Monday though Thursday they do a lot of writing in their English textbooks and journals. I will try to take the content of their current units and see how I can use music, movement and visual arts strategies to engage them with the content. This will call for some flexibility in thinking about how to embed the arts in a meaningful way, or in ways that assist the children in learning concepts and vocabulary in a new language. 

Geometric animals

This is my first day working with a class of 20 first graders in a small seaside community in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico. I have worked for a year to find a school where I can spend some of my time volunteering in classrooms. I am so excited to walk in the gate. I think back to the first day I stepped foot on a school campus in Nogales, Arizona, just across the border, to teach music in a K-6 school. It was a culture shock coming from Boston, and I loved the anticipation of getting to know children whose roots were from cultures much different from my own. Today, I have no idea of what to anticipate. There is a fence around the school with an intercom so that visitors can be buzzed into the gate. My limited Spanish is improving every day, but I must admit that I am not feeling completely confident in my ability to communicate. I hear a voice on the other end asking, in Spanish who is there. "Señora Julia Barwell para la Maestra Rosa". The gate buzzes and I am on my way....

The children are playing in the schoolyard when I arrive. I am feeling a little nervous. After thirty-two years of working with children, you would think that this would be automatic for me, but it is nothing like that. I am attempting to function with my limited second language skills and my expectations for myself are high. I want to make a good impression. I want the children and their teacher to look forward to my coming to their classroom. I want to feel like I am making a difference with their development of the English language. I want to effectively use my understanding of the arts to integrate meaningfully with their language development. I want them to look forward to my arrival. 

Their teacher, a lovely young woman named Rosa is there to greet me by the office. We have discussed today's lesson through emails. The students have been learning shapes and colors. I have tied these together with a book called "Moon Rope / Un Lazo a la Luna  by Lois Ehlbert. The book has beautiful art where animals are created with geometric shapes. I am adding in animal vocabulary through this story. The book is written in two languages with somewhat simple text. Rosa and I partner read the story aloud to the children as they sit, two together at small trapezoid shaped tables. I sneak a peek at the children's faces and they look excited, with big smiles on their faces. 

After the reading we stand up and do some movement. "How can we make our bodies shaped like a triangle?" I ask, with some Spanish sprinkled in...fortunately the Spanish word for this is triangulo. Movement is such an excellent tool for communication because children love to get out of their seats and they just need to follow physically. We make circles, squares, rectangles, etc...before sitting down. Then I ask think to think about the animals in the story and other animals they know. Looking at Lois Ehlbert's art work in the book, we examine her use of shapes to make pictures and animals. Taking a few shapes I create a simple visual model with some shapes I have prepared for the lesson. I can see that they are ready, by the looks on their faces. 

They set off to work...

Their creativity exceeds my expectations. I see all kinds of animals and students are modifying the shapes to make them work. Faces are drawn and backgrounds are incorporated into their work. I can see how inventive they are. We are writing names of animals in English. In retrospect, I think that the next time I will also have them write more, perhaps a caption. My challenge is the same. I know a lot of words in Spanish, but I am working on stringing them together with sentences. In effect, we are in the same place in acquiring our new languages. It gives me a lot to think about. How do the arts facilitate this? How can I use more intent in my next lesson?