Family Stories

The Lesson

This lesson was created to be culturally responsive and integrate Dance with Writing. Students got a chance to watch and analyze some dance performances I found on youtube. They also utilized their critical thinking skills to draw relationships between the choreographic and writing process. Finally, the students were able to reinforce their writing skills through the use of thinking maps and following the writing process. Furthermore, most of the students also received experience with word processing for the first time!

This lesson was a bit rushed because it was taught during my last two weeks of student teaching so there was limited time to get everything completed. However, the final products were beautiful and it was really great to read the stories that students had to share. These stories will be displayed in the classroom for Open House.

Student Work

Reflection

Throughout the progression of my lesson, I often found myself wondering if this lesson truly had an underlying cultural relevant aspect or if the relevancy was simply only on the surface. At the end, I believed that it met its goal of being culturally responsive. However, if I were to teach this lesson again, there are some things I would do different to strengthen the cultural aspect of the lesson.

This lesson took three days to complete which I feel was not enough time to allow students to fully grasp the purpose behind the lesson and fully develop their writing skills. When I first revealed the writing topic to the students many of them came up to me to tell me that they don’t do anything with their families. Although I had mentioned to the students that it could be something that happens every day, like eating dinner, I felt like more modeling was needed to really show the students the range of stories they could share. I attempted this by reading more excerpts from Family Pictures to the class. Most of the students eventually got it and many of them wrote about a family trip or going to church with their families. Another way I could have modeled to the students would be to write my own story and illustration and share that with the class. This would also allow me a chance to share my own story with the students which only seems fair since I was asking them to share their stories with me.

Something else I would do differently to really promote cultural responsiveness would be to change the order of how the final product was created. I had the students write a story first and then include an illustration that goes along with their story. This could be seen as one-dimensional since the students could simply complete this project on their own without any interaction with a family member. An alternative approach would be to assign the students interactive family homework to help them start off their writing project. I would ask the students to go through a family photo album with a family member and choose a picture together that they would like to share with their class. The students would then be asked to talk to the family member about the story behind the picture. Some questions they could ask are: What was happening when the picture was taken? Who are the people in the picture? How old are the people? Once this “interview” was over, students would then go through the writing process to write the story that goes along with the picture they chose. This alternative approach allows the opportunity for students to have a discussion with a family member about their own family and culture.

One last thing I would do differently would be to share the students’ stories in the form of a gallery walk. I would have the stories posted on all three sides of the classroom (the fourth side is comprised of windows) and then let students walk around the classroom and quietly read each others’ stories. If posting stories on the wall is not a viable option, I would have students leave their stories on their desks and we would do a one minute rotation where the students would have a minute to read the story on the desk they are standing at and then move a desk to their left after the minute is over. After either of these activities, I would provide a space for an open forum where students could share their thoughts and feedback on the stories they’ve read. I believe this approach would be more productive than having one student come up at a time to present. Having students present individually only allows one student to be doing something while the others are just sitting at their desks. A gallery walk would allow every student to be doing something so that no one is idle.