INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITY TWO 1

Instructional Activity II based on Chapter six of Chaika: Orality and Literacy: ​Unit four

March 20-April 16

● Target language​: English as a second language

● Grade level​: 9-12

● Proficiency level​ (ACTFL Proficiency guidelines)​: ​Level 5

● Instructional Objectives/goals:

○ I can use literature as a means to peer into other cultures and find out how they

are similar to mine.

○ I can make textual connections with and between other texts.

○ I can use literature discussions to negotiate meaning and build language skills.

○ I can use literature to take on new perspectives and worldviews.

○ I can use literature to understand how people who are different from me may

think and feel.

○ I can use literature to think critically and empathetically about a problem a

character faces.

○ I can use literature to celebrate the differences between cultures.

○ I can use literature to critically examine the world at large.

● National Standards for Foreign Language Learning (World Readiness Standards

for Language Learning): ​Standard one for grade 9-12: English language learners

communicate for social, intercultural, and instructional purposes within the school

setting. (Connections-Learners build, reinforce, and expand their knowledge of other

disciplines while using the language to develop critical thinking and to solve problems
INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITY TWO 2

creatively Acquiring information and diverse perspectives: Learners access and evaluate

information and diverse perspectives that are available through the language and its

cultures.)

● Activity Integration​: Students would have previously been introduced to the concepts

of oral societies and literate societies and literature in their own societies. They would

also be familiar with the concept of ethnorelativism and how examining someone’s

cultural context can help us to understand their beliefs and actions.

● Explanation of the link from approaches to intercultural competence and inclusion

of sociolinguistics from Chaika and Jackson: ​My focus is on chapter six of Chaika

(2008), the concept of literate and oral societies. I am also pulling in concepts from

Jackson on building intercultural competence, becoming an effective intercultural

communicator, speech style, and learning about ethnorelativism.

● Pre-activity/Bell-ringer​: Students would talk about folktales from their own cultures and

how some of the same elements are weaved into tales in other culture or became

literature. For example, Think about the story ​The Grandmother Tiger, a​ Chinese folk

tale in which a tiger eats a child who let him into the house.

○ What common story does this remind you of in US culture? What are some

common themes? What do these stories tell you about the values of this culture or

what it views as good or bad? What other things do they tell you? Do you think

that this tale had a specific purpose? Why or why not?

● Teacher and student instructions including descriptions and examples: ​Students will

have to have listened to ​Mexican Whiteboy ​on audiobook the previous night. I would
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have chosen book pairs. For this particular lesson, I would choose two books to use on

two different days by the same author on similar topics: ​Ball Don’t Lie ​and ​Mexican

Whiteboy,​ both authored by Matt de la Peña. I would begin by giving them background

information on the author, telling them how he enjoyed basketball more than school and

how he hated to read. I would tell them he was Mexican and white and that he grew up

poor. Basketball was his ticket to college, and ​The Color Purple ​play made him fall in

love with literature.

○ Questions for discussion with class: How do you think the author’s life

experiences influenced his writing? How did his look into a culture different from

his own through literature affect him? Why do you think it had this effect on him?

Next, I would ask if the students had read any other books by the author. If anyone had, I would

ask them to think about or share a time when they felt like Danny, the main character, a time

when they were seeking to discover their identity and felt out of place in the world, a time when

they may have also made some bad decisions. Alternatively, someone could share a story with a

similar plot from a movie or another book that they had read. I would use the pointing technique,

going back to very important statements or turning points in the story and making them more

salient for discussion. First, I would begin with overarching, prominent themes. If there were

some biracial students in the class, I would ask them about how they identify. We would talk

about healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, since Danny self-mutilates in the story (with

his fingernails). If there were students that were Mexican, we would discuss how they described

Mexican culture. We would compare/contrast it to American culture. We would discuss the

implications of the book about both cultural societies and if these were negative/positive,
INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITY TWO 4

stereotypical or not. We would discuss what this book told us that we couldn’t learn from a

conventional textbook about poverty, race, family, etc. We could look at a map of Mexico and

identify some places that were quite similar to where Danny was visiting. Describe the prose that

the story is written in.

○ Questions for discussion for more narrowed topics: Danny is Mexican/white.

How does the author show that he is different from everyone else in the

beginning? What do you think Danny’s problem is? What is he looking for? (Why

is he visiting his father’s side of the family?) What is the significance of Danny’s

father’s absence from his life in the story? What role does baseball play in the

story? What unhealthy coping mechanisms does Danny have? What influences

the way Danny does or doesn’t deal with his problems? What are some internal

and external factors that attribute to Danny’s coping mechanisms? What role does

race, if any, play in the story? Socioeconomic status? How does Danny find a

new meaning for family? (Who is his family in the story?) How is Danny similar

to or different from you? What do the characters tell us about inequities in

society? How does the urban setting call into question power, wealth, and

privilege?

● Materials needed: ​Audible book for ​Mexican Whiteboy a​ nd ​Ball Don’t Lie. ​Internet for

maps.

● Assessment after completion: ​Success with topic would be judged by the students’

ability to make meaning of the text, to use process drama, or come up with solutions at a

turning point, to work through problems significant to a certain group of people. I would
INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITY TWO 5

judge based on how well the student conveyed his thoughts and how creative he was with

solutions, even if the language weren’t perfect​. ​I would listen for discernment into mixed

race culture by the kinds of comments that students made after (i.e. placing people in

categories or realizing that cultures are made up of individuals who usually identify with

more than one culture). I would listen for incitement to social justice or action, which

would translate as empathy for characters in different situations or cultures. I would look

for cues in their speech that reflect that the literature has enriched and enlarged their

vision and understanding and how well they describe cross-cultural exchange between

the book pair. I would examine their T-charts for their analysis of the books. I would

listen for evidence of insight gained from the literature into another culture from

discussion with classmates.

● Follow-up activity- ​We would follow up with ​Ball Don’t Lie t​ he next day and follow a

​ tudents could work in groups to make T-charts to compare and contrast

the stories’ features: plot, characters, problems and solutions, settings, and so forth.

Alternatively, students could include other elements in their charts like background,

sports in the book, what characters symbolized in larger society, etc. I would allow

students to introduce a text set of additional titles related to various aspects of the original

book pair, thus expanding the intertextual connections readers make between texts.