Language: Week 7 - Compare/Contrast

Axel, Xavier, Hanix, Isaac R., Jackson, Jesse Q., Simone, Zooey

This week’s group was very focused and interested in the atelier subject and activities. Some comments we made about what language is, were:

Isaac R.: It’s something where you talk

Zooey: Mexico

Xavier: You draw

Jackson: I speak Spanish

Axel : P-P-C-C

Children shared about their experiences with language, such as Jackson who was talking a lot about how “I just know Spanish! I don’t know why?” He counted in Spanish for us, and him, as well as most other children wanted to read all 4 of the bilingual English/Spanish books, and tried saying each word that they heard in Spanish! Some kids associated Spanish with countries they have been to where they heard the language spoken.

One day we discussed the language we all speak at school and everyone immediately knew “we speak English!” We read books about rhyming, talked about similar and different words in English, and then drew messages or wrote letters on paper. We figured out that with the “ABC ‘s” (letters), we can communicate language in every language, but sometimes letters look or sound different in different languages.

We sang the ABC song in English and German and had lots of fun with these very different sounding letters in German. We sang some other German songs as well, and sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” in Spanish (La Araňa pequeňita). Many children were very successful in repeating and singing the Spanish words of the song, while having a harder time with the unfamiliar German words.

On the last day we looked at a book with sign language, and tried signing each of our names in that language which uses hands and fingers to communicate. Longer names were tricky we soon noticed!