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DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

For my group of third graders I designed a book bag  to coincide with Mary Beth Meehan’s Documenting Cultural Communities photography project. Mary Beth’s work with ICS culminates in a photo exhibition displaying ten weeks of student photography and writing. Visiting the final exhibition at the close of the project almost brought me to tears and also helped me clarify my purposes for the book bag project, should I decide to do this same one again, independent of the photo project.

            Each third grader is given a digital camera and coached over the course of the project on how to shoot meaningful images. As part of their Social Studies curriculum ICS students define culture as a group and set out each weekend to capture aspects of whatever they determine to be their culture. Images included food, family, past times, church events, hairstyles, errands, jobs and toys. The project culminates in a self-portrait as students begin to coalesce all the various parts of their selves.

            For the five week book bag component I selected Family Pictures and In My Family by Carmen Lomas Garza. Both books, written and illustrated by Garza depict simple family rituals and daily life in beautiful acrylic paintings. Beside each painting there is a description of the event. Like the third grade photo project, every day events, when held up to the light, become profoundly beautiful. Students were instructed to read one of the two Garza books with their family. Together with parents students were then prompted to choose a family memory or tradition of their own to draw with colored pencil, pen and crayons. After taking home the book bag, students shared their picture and story with the class the next day during morning meeting. In this way the project built community and fostered a sense of belonging. Students were able to bring part of themselves into the classroom as the group continually found shared histories or questioned each other to learn more about one another. This project was especially meaningful at ICS because of the many different communities attending the school. A few of which would hardly ever interact if not for this place!

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 “I have never presented myself as a reading teacher, only as a teacher who has 'taught' reading. I hesitate to use this term because I believe that rather than teach children to read, we instead give them opportunities to learn how […] I don’t believe any of us knows how a child actually learns to read. Given the differences in the ways our students approach almost everything, there should be little doubt that different children latch onto different features of text to make their first inroads into literacy […] Thus, most successful teachers watch what their students are doing and try to expose them to as many tools as possible to map language onto text.” (Delpit 2012 p.60)

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.