Day 8 Teaching of Reading – Language Acquisition
Read aloud poem: Trees by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (December 6, 1886 – July 30, 1918). It celebrates the beauty of God’s creation as it personifies the tree as a woman who leans on God for her quiet strength.
Read aloud story: The Blackbird and the Peacocks by Eric Carle. The story reminded me of a local story of a tortoise who wanted to attend the party of Birds and fly, who ended up with a cracked back. Simply put the writer’s message is to accept one’s physical attributes and enjoy all that makes one unique. As the Desiderata cautions,
“Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection….”
We started with the important reminder that the mental health of the learner affects learning saturation. Therefore the teacher must be mindful to recognise when a learner is not confident, anxious or distracted, especially where circumstances at home negatively affect the learner’s progress.
Language Acquisition
Language has many functions. It is instrumental, regulatory, informative, personal, imaginative, interactional and heuristic. We were asked to identify the function of language in a given statement to measure our understanding of the functions of language. Almost a history lesson, my takeaways were that language evolves over time and that all people have language as it is a tool of communication. We were taken on a journey of the development of the English language through its origins in Old Norse, spoken by the Vikings and Anglo Saxons, the Norman’s conquest in 1066 where for 300 years French and Latin were important languages in England, and the influence of the East Midland dialect to produce Standard English in the 1500s.
In Trinidad and Tobago our language evolved from immigrants pidgin and their creolised English. We had a fun time demonstrating our understanding of our Trinidadian dialect by looking at the grammar rules:
- Question form of a sentence – We making chow?
- Multiple negatives – She en eating no food
- Unmarked verb as an adjective – Condense milk
- Pronouns – allyuh, dem, dey
We were introduced to the concept of the Bio Poem and had to create a Bio Poem in the format:
- Line 1: First name only
- Line 2: 4 descriptive traits
- Line 3: SIbling/ friend of
- Line 4: Lover of
- Line 5: Who feels
- Line 6: Who needs
- Line 7: Who gives
- Line 8: Who fears
- Line 9: Who wants to see (3 things)
- Line 10: Resident of
- Line 11: Last name only
Here is my Bio Poem:
Malaika
the creative soul, who will make you laugh, encourage and inspire you;
Friend of anyone who is up for a loyal, caring fun friendship;
Who loves to spend time at the beach;
Who feels life is worth living and sharing because God is awesome; and love makes the ultimate difference in how we treat others;
Who needs to be loved, appreciated & respected;
Who gives time to increasing her learning, time to heal and time to indulge in self care;
Who fears no one but God, fears not what people may think and say negatively about her;
Who wants to experience a safari, see more people just get along & to see the black Caribbean child advance;
Resident of the Global village, the country of Trinidad and Tobago more precisely
Ryan
28.04.2021
