Culturally Responsive Pedagogies (pt1 )

One major focus for my class this term has been a cultural focus.

We have read a lot of culture based books, with a learning focus on making connection with what we read, and making predictions based on titles and cover pages. 

The first story we read together was the story Watercress Tuna and the children of Champion Street, written by Patricia Grace, a very famous New Zealand author. We read the story with the students, and one of the follow ups was to listen to the Youtube clip.

Then, we used the Maori, Samoan (etc) words from the audio file, and changed them as we read the English-only physical book. This cemented our knowledge and understanding of the words from other cultures. As we read the English-only version, I would leave blank spaces while reading and the students would say the Maori/Samoan word aloud to fill in the gap e.g. I would leave out 'dance' and they would say 'kanikani'. 

Then, each student wrote their own 'page' from the book - using a cultural item from their own culture. Here is one students' writing - 

Then we made our 'pages' into real pages, and hung them up around the classroom.

Some of the students even bought in their culture item, the one the magical tuna 'gave' them, and I was able to take some photos of them so their 'page' in our class book became even more realistic!

This was a great way to kick off Term 2, and get the kids hooked into reading and writing about their own cultures!