Carnival & Articles of Clothing

January 25^th 

Our day began today with a lesson about articles of clothing. I wanted to take a song and modify it to create a context for the topic and have students connect their singing to writing. I began with a bag of clothing, pulling out different articles and having students help me to name them. I had also prepared several photos of clothes that I held up for students to identify the English word for them, along with their color. They enjoyed identifying the clothing, and I noticed that they want to put the noun in front of the adjective. For example, I heard lots of students say "pants blue". This is the natural structure of their home language. Their teacher, Rosa corrected them and explained that in English the adjective is in front of the noun. I imagine that this skill will be a developmental, much like my own acquisition of their language. This activity built into our lesson content. I had the children stand up and pretend to put on shoes, shirts, gloves, hats, etc…to pantomime the actions and assist in the memorization process. 

I had also prepared a song for them. The song was based on an American folk song, Mary Wore a Red Dress… I wanted to have a context for wearing a special “outfit” and as the students all wear uniforms to school, I wanted to find another context that was special to six and seven year old children. Carnival is a huge holiday in Guaymas, including a few days off from school. This seemed like a great context for thinking about wearing something special. During this wonderful fiesta, participants and spectators wear beads, carnival masks, and very colorful outfits. Our new song went like this…____________________ wore a _______________   __________________ when he/she went to Carnival.

I taught them the song and we inserted many children’s ideas. For example; “Jessica wore a pink mask, when she went to carnival”We sang the song and then talked about what they might wear to the upcoming Carnival parade. I had prepared a handout for the students to write the English words for their verse of the song, and then draw themselves in the context of the carnival. I also made the decision to have them insert the pronoun he or she for their sentence. They enjoyed the task, and drew some wonderful pictures of themselves at the parade. Many of them were wearing masks, and they drew themselves wearing tuxedos or dresses, much like the children and adults on the floats in the parade. From this lesson I learned a lot about their personal interests and how they imagined themselves at Carnival. It is such a big community event. I was able to attend the Carnival parade , and I saw children wearing wonderful masks that were available everywhere, as well as throwing confetti, and children and adults in the parade wearing colorful costumes. 

Neithan and a few other boys wanted to know how to write the English word for tuxedo. However, the direct translation for the word used is "smoking". Their teacher was not sure of whether to use the word "smoking" or "tuxedo". It is interesting that some words do not directly translate. I saw a few young boys on floats in the parade wearing tuxedos. This helped me to understand their thinking. Context is everything. 

Jessica drew the setting for her carnival outfit. She imagined herself in a pink dress and included vehicles pulling beautiful floats. I love that she always includes a dog in her pictures, which makes me wonder if she has a dog or just imagines herself with one. 

Chrystian, like many other students, drew himself in a mask. He also included a lot of confetti in his picture, which is an element that is everywhere ar the Carnival parade. Like many other children, he wanted to include a couple of articles of clothing. Of course, if he wore a red jacket he must wear a red mask as well. 

Scarlett is smaller and a bit younger than the rest of the students. She drew a wonderful girl in a green dress, and then wrote "Scarlett wore a pink dress when she went to Carnival." What a beautiful picture! This is a great way to assess whether or not they know their color words. This makes me think about the point at which we begin to think in a second language. Would colors be one of the first sets of words that we might think because they are so visual? It seems that our brains might more automatically use the second language to find the correct word. In any event, Scarlett had the dress, but her pretty shade of green was not pink. However, one of the pictures I showed early in the lesson was of a green dress, much like the one in her drawing. She must have liked that dress, and the color word was less important to her. 

Today it felt more and more like the layers of the lesson were assisting students with their language and keeping them engaged. I discovered so much about the importance of context not only in creating an interesting and perhaps relevant setting for lesson content, but in my own understanding of culture. From a teaching perspective, it appears to work well to have students move from one activity carefully scaffolded to another, building on the new vocabulary and content for the lesson. The students could easily do the writing with a model. The song prepared them well for this task. They had to choose a color, a pronoun and an article of clothing to complete the sentence. I am very challenged by doing all of this with children who are truly not English language speakers. Everything we do together could open the door to building fluency and help them to feel at ease in their language acquisition. The movement and music are key to the flow. The visual arts reveal what is most important to the children and possible what content they are absorbing from the lesson. I did notice that they are still mostly passive in their participation with the music, and in our next lesson I would like to explore ways to engage them more with singing in English.