A new thought, a new start..in 2009

Jan 2009--
I am going to keep this journal this year, if only as notes to myself and interested colleagues.
And I say again that "chatterbox"is a stage in our young children's language growth that we teachers can use to launch them into literacy. I have changed the name of this blog from "journal" to "files". The data I keep in some papers and files.

For years I was tossed on a sea of "how" shall I write up this journal? How can I let the ideas and description flow? And I have decided that a narrative style is the best. There is so much to tell. I have only been making and posting notes all over the place. I am eager to settle down and get into the writing habit. These files will detail my struggles with composing text rather than giving the text itself. It is how I will work with the writing process. This will be a place of notes for myself and my students.

Stay well.

Getting closer

I've been away for a long time...so I'm back here. Still chasing dreams of Literacy and Caribbean children who chat. It has been a year or more that I have been away. But I'll go back and pick up the topics: listed in an earlier entry, since the recalling of it will do me go. I simply must get organized in 2007.

*These were the strands:my little writing tasks for the week:

*"Doin' Work"

*"Tellin me how it was long time...."

**Show me how you do it? How you do it..."about Reading from a text/story book

*In the yard and going to the store.

*Their own thing...

It is unbelievable, but these things happened over 12 years ago but with 600+ ECCE Centers being built in Trinidad and Tobago at this time, the little happenings related in this blog may just come in handy for some teachers and parents.

Christmas 2005

** Have a Blessed Christmas all!!
Chatterbox will grow in the next year I hope. I am very fond of this project and this blog I suppose is a way of exploring how to get it on stream. It will be a good thing
to network more though. These are days of endless rain and hot blazing sunshine...crazy weather.

**The Trinidad and Tobago gov't has started a new national thrust re the improvement of ECE Education. Great, but I feel there should be very special emphasis placed on research and training in the Literacy needs of creole-influenced young children and their teachers. But who is listening( while the East-West corridor continues to flounder in dissonance?)

Still I look forward to great things in 2006

**Seems as though...Life outside of the journal

It's foreday morning..."Boy"-- my red doberman was howling his mating song for Lisa. I had to get up and move her so I could go back to sleep. But first, I sit here trying to patch up my site with the Google Ads (makes sense to me), but the site wouldn't settle down. It will right-size itself??

Amazing how these "things" work. How Language can command a whole technology.
Amazing how the children too. have grown and moved away! Playing the tapes of some of their chatter on a primitive cassette and going back over some almost ten-year old scribbled notes..is hard. The emotional quality and pushing aunty-like things and feelings away from the reporting of what happened about their Literacy and growth in Language is like a space with no bridge now! How my Mother, Grandma, must feel empty even as we too,are old and have moved out of the big house. There used to be voices, and child chat echoing there and laughter and the smell of food cooking...forever cooking ...and old age setting in on her/us. That is why I stay so long to write down what happened about their Literacy. This is the hardest part: I have to separate my aunty-hood from the data. I'll get it going again.

Now, let's see how these "Googlies" and the template is doing-- still all mixed up?? Well-- I celebrate a turning point here.

Some Entries to write about--just so I'll remember...

**The children and I did many Literacy things together: I plan to group the descriptions of them under 3 or 4 strands: These might be

*"Doin' Work"

*"Tell me how it was long time...."

**Show me how you do it? How you do it..."about Reading from a text/story book

*In the yard and going to the store.

*Their own thing...

*These were just notes from informal observations that I made dring this time

**When the East-West Corridor and Our Youth are blowing this twin-island State to bits...

**It is a long time since I have written but here goes...I should have come back months ago. I have tried to consolidate my various webs in a way to make a fair round of regular visits.
*About this topic, I have to offload..
*I am glad for this space to off load...thoughts...sometimes, doomsday prophecy-like thoughts that came years ago. Some of our young people are on the rampage. That area in North Trinidad called the East-West corridor, along the Eastern Main Road, from Arima to Port-of-Spain is in social trauma. Now too, the whole island is in social trauma and there could be a Literacy interpretation for all of this.

* Those in rebellion have rejected "school-type Literacy" since they see it as not having any relevance to their lives at present. "Caribbean academia" presents them with a badge of failure from the beginning...there is no real room for their Creole-type oracy with its penchant for performance and braggadocio (male) styles...those especially who have not seen a kindergarten school door. Form 1S(Remedial) in the Junior Sec right after Primary School is their lot. They may spend two years in this class and give up...their chat, their lives of small victories dying young in them for want of a syllabus or a teaching style that acknowledges their innate talent for potential which resides in this . Then translate how translate this to a formal mode-- for spoken and written texts. Not difficult but challenging!
**Have you ever heard them (13 and 14 year olds) after a football/soccer game? -- the boasting, the repetitious affirmation of young selfhood that brought them victory--in rapid-fire creole
speech of how their team gained victory:
#1--You eh see we...? An we win! we win boy!
#2--In de firs half, we nearly didn score, you know
#1--Yeah,we still win. Now we have to play...

And there a short narratives interspersed with jokes and some or sometimes much conflictual talk about how their school team gained victory. All the while they are sitting on the tops of desks and fanning themselves with jerseys.
*Have we learned to use this powerful narrational style that is the gift of the normal Trinitogonian
(male and female) to penetrate the mysteries of formal-literacy-school-type- texts or even to help them to create such texts?

**No, we have not but we have imposed on all "more distance" with unreacheable chasm-like spaces through the setting up of more difficult demanding examinations. THESE assessment procedures are fine in themselves, "but unless research and teaching procedures are put in place to harness the Creole verbal potential that exists here in Trinidad and Tobago and to translate these into ways that will bridge the formality of school type Literacy", there will continue to be this lack of identification on the part of many young people with what is deemed social success.

**This is what impels "Chatterbox"--what it aims to accomplish. This research process--the translation, switching process ought to start in early childhood; then Early/Emergent Literacy must be grounded in the Caribbean family and community.

More "fire"later

"Making Conversation...# 1

***These "Making Conversation..." sections will attempt to demonstrate how important it is for us to lead our preschoolers into chat instead of demolishing this skill in them believing as was done in the past that "a child must be seen and not heard."

**What did Angela and Camille talk about all this time -- that they were growing into language? i.e between ages 2+ to 5?

**And "how" did they talk-- budding creole styles ? and their participation in interactions in the home?

**Then how was this linked to their literacy development in a home setting?

These are "just notes" for myself and for my students and anyone who wants to leave a comment. In the next "few" entries, I'll attempt to answer these questions.

The Old Talk Scheme-- Notes from the Speech of Adults

Types of talk/Mode /Strategies --- to be redone using a different format
_______________________/* indicates strategies_________________ __________________________________________________________
*Informal in a group --language mainly English-based Creole : Keen listening is also important in Old Talk

POLITE USES OF
Speech--Having regard
for the other person: Speech Act: Relating-saying what happened/ *narrating -- and all that goes with it
"having respect" /*embedding
(Creole speech) /*sequencing
Serious/joking /*retelling
/*IMPROVISATION
/*punning

Other Types of Talk:
*Sweet Talk -humorous /making joke
*Discussion
*Mamaguy ironical/satirical /* turning and returning the talk
*Picong
*Fatigue/cracking joke -entertaining /*role play


*Brag/Boast-- a male speech /*double entendre
activity/goes along with /*THE VERBAL CHALLENGE
"relating" and chanting etc. /* valuing talk or ideas

**Arguing --the putting forward of a point using or ideas
repetition and tone of voice /*knowing how to use an appropriate tone of voice

**Knowing Bounds Limits/ knowing when to stop /*screening people and ideas
Avoiding violation /*judging
/*discriminating

**A range of "ignorant" speech--"Polite" ways have gone--words /*evaluating
are "thrown" resulting in a /*levelling
loss of respect for the speaker
/*laughing/at
Type of Speech--Answer back , rum talk, gango talk, talking stupidness, cuss etc.

Chanting /drumming/ performance /*appreciative, creative
participation--being
supportive
singing/
playing music



Ejaculatory devices/of a wide range --the paralinguistic sort unique to T&T-- adds meaning to spoken
communication (this is a study in itself)


Closure (?) /* evaluating /* giving feedback
_________________________________________________________
Suggestions for Adult and teenage learners...
**How can this scheme be modified and applied to enhance a better understanding of texts written in English?...(1)conversation about texts using the strategies and (2) then writing about texts in English.
_________________________________________________________
*For Young Children-- (Drama and Story Creation can be useful exercise that can involve painless early attempts at code-switching...)

Modifications are required for young children or a different scheme developed based on their experience with language. I will suggest these modifications in another section. (baj)

*For example children's interaction with some adults will involve:

...making story/retelling a story
..."carrying a message"
...imitation of an adult
...complaint/"telling on"
...learning how to greet...
...giving a reason etc -saying how and why

...but "carrying a message" is particularly important when a child gets to the age of 5/6 even older since it involves verbal accuracy and good reportage. Categories are to be added and a scheme to be developed for younger children.

"Making Conversation like a big girl..." Children and Old Talk

Just notes--continued... Do young children "old talk"?

**Why "old?"-- I don't quite know, because one does not give "stale" news during an old talk session. It may refer to the informality, and the relaxed, laid-back attitude or posture of the participants who exchange talk and listen--sometimes called "a lime." With this kind of structure, participation within the group is fluid--the talk flows...mainly Creole -type English is used.

**Young children in this interaction:

"Old Talk" is basically an acitvity for adults but young children in the home dart in and out among the adults ,are held in the arms or are nearby
on the periphery of the group playing. Sometimes they are listening to and observing the adults and they imitate adult behavior.

**On many evenings Camille would invite me to talk: "Let's "lime" nah, Aunty B.."
and this meant lying on a mattress placed on the floor in the breeze of a fan to chat about anything that interested them...with no activity but remembering , recalling a story, listening , giggling...loads of giggles. Years before this a teenaged nephew used to ask :"Let's chat Aunty B.." whenever he visited.

*Even though the media for viewing and listening is good (t.v. etc) chatting to be heard is irreplaceable (??) for the communication of the ideas of children.
"Grandma" referred in a complimentary fashion (even though she was busy)
to this chatting need/behavior in the two girls: "making conversation like a big girl..." I believe that this "making conversation " in the language and the
appropriate participation structures they glean from their social environment is one of the best literacy teaching tools/gifts that we can use with our children
here in the Caribbean who come from a creole-speaking background and who will be labelled "at risk"--if only we knew how to use it.

*We will look at what Angela and Camille chatted about and how they chatted...but first briefly--the Old TALK SCHEME.