Lesson 5.1: Text Selection for the Culturally Responsive Classroom

Focus: Understand the importance of maintaining a culturally responsive classroom and selecting texts that are reflective of the culture.

Prior to the Collaboration Group Meeting

1. Reflection Journal

Write in your reflection journal prior to the Collaboration Group meeting. You are to respond weekly in your journal, reflecting on your learning, observation, questions, and personal connections. Your reflections need to be at least 250 words. You may choose how to format your journal, though you may want to consider the following as you write:

Bring your reflection journal to the weekly Collaboration Group meeting, and prepare to share your entries.

2. Readings

NOTE: To print the linked documents, do the following:

• Put your mouse on the document and right click. You will see a window that asks you where you want to download the document.
• Determine where you want to save the document.
• After saving the document, open and print it in MS Word.

1. Read the article in the February 2003 Pacific Educator called “Our Heritage, Ourselves: The Importance of Maintaining Cultural Literacy in the Pacific Islands” by Masa-Aki Emesiochl (pp. 4-5). As you read, take notes about the importance of maintaining cultural literacy in the Pacific and ways you think this can be done. Bring your notes to the Collaboration Group meeting.
2. Read Text Selections for the Culturally Responsive Classroom. Add any additional questions you can think of to the list, and bring the revised list to the Collaboration Group meeting.
3. Select reading material to use for a read aloud. The reading selection can be a book, poem, legend, or an article appropriate for children. Consider using the Internet to locate the material. Using Text Selections for the Culturally Responsive Classroom, review the reading selection. Bring the selection to the Collaboration Group meeting and share it with the group, keeping in mind each of the questions listed on Text Selections. With the Collaboration Group’s help, decide if the reading selection you shared is appropriate to add to Read Aloud and Shared Reading Selections for the Pacific Region, K-3. The books listed on Read Aloud and Shared Reading Selections for the Pacific Region, K-3 are written in English. Since many of the entities teach students in the vernacular during the lower elementary grades, translating the texts into the vernacular is an option to consider. The translation can then be pasted over the English text.

3. Guided Reading Selections for the Pacific Region, K-3

In addition to materials for reading aloud to students and using as shared reading texts, it is important to have reading selections that can be used for guided reading. In this course, guided reading is defined as the following: “The teacher works with a small group who have similar reading processes. The teacher selects and introduces new books and supports children reading the whole text to themselves, making teaching points during and after the reading” (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996, p. 22).

Guided Reading Selections for the Pacific Region, K-3 lists books that can be used for guided reading from the emergent through the independent reading level. Read the introduction and the book list, making note of any books you feel should be added or removed. Be prepared to talk about your decisions at the Collaboration Group meeting.

During the Collaboration Group Meeting

After the Collaboration Group Meeting