Linguistically and Culturally Relevant Reading Activity

Linguistically and Culturally Relevant Reading Activity

Your names: Cylie McAdams and Laura Price

Enduring understandings or essential questions:

1) Recalling a text is an essential literacy skill.
2) How does making predictions before reading help us comprehend a text?
3) How can we use word-solving strategies to help us make meaning of unknown
words in a text?

Content and language objectives:

Content Objectives:
1) Students will be able to recall details from a text.
2) Students will be able to use strategies to decipher unknown words.
Language Objectives for the after-reading activity:
In pairs, using photo copied images as a support, students will be able to talk with their
partner about what they see their classmates showing in the freeze frame picture they
created and connect it to one detail they recall from the text.
A- (Audience) In pairs, students
B- (Behavior)- be able to talk with their partner about what they see their classmates
showing in the freeze frame
C- (Condition)- using photo copied images as a support
D- (Degree) - connect it to one detail they recall from the text
Overall Language Objective for All Lessons:
Students will be able to verbally recall details from the text with each other through
discussions about the reading.

Word Level: Wriggle, sprinkling, vines, wrinkled, prickly, lumpy. Describing words.

Types of flowers names (poppies, peonies, petunias) wheelbarrow, chop, sheau hwang gua
(vegetable), shiann tsay, torng hau, aroma, magical, Figurative language the flavors of
the soup seemed to dance in my mouth and laugh all the way down to my stomach, trade.
Poked

Grade level: 2nd

Duration: 25 minutes for 5 consecutive days
Monday: Before reading activity
Tuesday: First during reading activity
Wednesday: Second during reading activity
Thursday: Third during reading activity
Friday: After reading activity
The book: The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin

What do you like about this book?

We like this book because it is culturally relevant and because it incorporates a culture that
is not as commonly written about in children's books. We also liked this book because it
features a wide variety of descriptive language as the little girl describes the different
flowers and vegetables growing in the gardens in her neighborhood. This book also
features a little bit of comparing and contrasting when the little girl is noticing differences
between her familys garden that grows Chinese vegetables that she thinks are ugly and
compares them to her neighbors gardens that grow beautiful, colorful flowers. When she
talks about these differences she describes the things she sees. We liked how at the end of
the book the cultures come together because her family shares the soup they made using
their Chinese vegetables with their neighbors and their neighbors share their beautiful
flowers with the little girls family. The next year, in the Spring, the whole neighborhood
plants a combination of Chinese vegetables and flowers in their gardens and we see
cultures coming together in a beautiful way!
Sequence
BEFORE-READING ACTIVITY:
Predicting from a Visual (p.147 Gibbons)
We will show students the front cover of the book, which is shown below. We will give students

15 seconds to think to themselves about what they think the story is going to be about based on the
front cover.We will then have them turn to their assigned turn-and-talk partner to discuss what
they think the story will be about. After students have had time to share with their partner, we will
re-gather the class as a large group. Students will have time in the large group to share out their
predictions that they discussed with their turn-and-talk partner. As students volunteer their ideas
the teacher will create a mind map on the board to collect student thoughts and ideas and keep
these visible while reading the text. This full-group discussion will allow students to activate their
background knowledge about gardening and growing food, as well as introduce the topic and
related vocabulary of gardening to students who are not familiar with it. We will also give time for
students to relate the topic and vocabulary words to things that they know in their first language(s).

DURING/READING ACTIVITIES:
1) Modeled Reading (p.152): Since this is the first time that students are reading this
text, the teacher will read the book to the students so that they can focus more on
comprehending the story than on decoding the words in the text. Modeled reading
also helps students to hear the expression in the text more so than if they were to
read it themselves the first time. As the teacher reads the book they will encourage
students to see whether their predictions are correct and will refer back to the ideas
in the mind map that is on the board still from the Predicting from a Visual
activity. As we do this, however, we will make it clear to students that it is
common for predictions to not always be correct and that it is okay if theirs did not
turn out to be true.
2) Rereading for Detail (p. 154): We have noticed a few words within The Ugly
Vegetables that are content specific vocabulary that may be challenging for
students. Therefore, we chose to use the activity Rereading for Detail as a way to
teach students strategies for trying to understand the meaning of unknown words.
Some words we identified as troublesome might be: wriggle, prickly,
lumpy, sprinkling, wheelbarrow, aroma, magical, trade, and specific
flower type names (ie: Petunia). When using this activity we will teach students
strategies such as reading to the end of the sentence (rather than stopping at the
unknown word) to see whether this helps in understanding the word (Gibbons,
2015, p.155), encouraging students to look at the text that comes before and after
the word, and looking at the pictures or visuals for more information. We will
model this for students and ask them to practice it in the large group.
3) Shared Book (p.156): We will project this book onto an interactive whiteboard so
that it is large and visible for all students. This also allows us to mark on the book.
Using a shared book makes reading much more engaging for students because
when they are reading they are able to join into the reading and read along with the
teacher. As the teacher reads the text more and more, the students learn to develop
good reading strategies by being a part of the reading process. Students also

develop metacognitive awareness through discussions about things such as why

titles and words are important, and how to solve for unknown words.
AFTER READING ACTIVITIES
1) Freeze Frames (p.162)
First we will introduce the activity of freeze frames to the students and explain that they
will be acting out a frozen picture of a scene in the book. After we explain the activity to
students, we will re-read the book to them so that they remember the sequence of the
story. After reading the story we will assign students in pairs to a specific scene in the text.
We will photo copy images from the book that show these scenes so that students are able
to recall what happened in their assigned page. Students will have a five minutes to work
with their partner and decide how they want to show what is happening in their text scene
using their bodies as a frozen, silent picture. After all students have prepared their
tableau, we will have students form a large circle and have the pair who is showing their
tableau go into the center of the circle so that all students can see their frozen image.
Students who are viewing the tableau will try to figure out what the tableau is showing
from the book by recalling the plot of the text. They will turn and talk with a partner about
what they think the tableau is showing. This activity is great for ELLs because it allows
them to engage in recalling the text without having to use too much language. This also
allows the teachers to check to see if all students comprehended the text.