“Names are Powerful”. Jenna Fournel recently unpacked the article “Fostering Culturally Relevant Literacy Instruction: Lessons from a Native Hawaiian Classroom” by Katherine Wurdeman -Thurston and Julie Kaomea in the July issue of Language Arts.
Here are some connections from ReadWriteThink.org that provide additional examples of projects that can be done to share family information and stories:
Creating Family Timelines: Graphing Family Memories and Significant Events
Students interview family members, and then create graphic family timelines based on important and memorable family events. For an activity that can be done out of school, see http://bit.ly/gcdQzm.
Exploring and Sharing Family Stories
Writing gets personal when students interview family members in order to write a personal narrative about that person.
My Family Traditions: A Class Book and a Potluck Lunch
After analyzing a book about families, students create a class book with artwork and information about their ancestry, traditions, and recipes, followed by a potluck lunch.
Recording Family Stories
Older students can take part in the process of building family histories by recording the stories, or memoirs, of family members.
Do you have any classroom examples to share?