Chatterbox--Caribbean Early Literacy Files

A new thought, a new start..in 2009

2009-01-06T04:25:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-14T19:02:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-18T19:08:00.000-08:00

** 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

2005-06-14T00:14:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-05-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

**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...

2005-05-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

**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

2004-08-08T06:31:00.000-07:00

***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

2004-08-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

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

2004-08-05T05:22:00.000-07:00

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.

The "Language-as-Talk" Environment in a Trinidad Setting

2004-08-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

Let me introduce a term that is a Trinidadian speech event and a national pastime--"old talk". Between 1990 and 1995, I collected data on types of Trinidad talk from approx 100 respondents (adults and teenagers)-- with regard to their participation and experiencein/with this speech event. From their responses I developed a scheme, where based on the type of talk/talk situation I saw what several of the the respondents thought were matching verbal strategies...that were used with that particular "act."

In a positive sense old talk is informal verbal communication within a group. I mention it here because it is an example of the verbal/language environment in which young Trinidadian children live and grow. Old Talk is "of the folk" and participation is age, gender and interest- graded. It is a way of socializing--sharing stories, news, the latest gossip...one cannot have "stale talk" --in an informal mode. ( The notes in this section are taken from a working paper for data analysis consultations which I presented at the Ethnography in Education Forum--1995: U of Penn)--click on the link for some useful references--see esp Dell Hymes.

**The range of types of talk within an old talk event: "relating" (narration),
arguing(repetitive holding forth of a point/s by a speaker/s--a different kind of logic??), making joke, knowing bounds or limits,"violation" or heavy insult, picong, mamaguy, sweet talk, bragging and boasting, singing and chanting, mimicking--and a host of other acts; some have their "polite" forms and others like rum talk, quarrel, obscene, mauvais langue, cuss and rude talk were seen as "ignorant" (in the sense of being brutish--or lacking respect) negative verbal behavior by several of the respondents(valuing talk).

**Young children acquire and understand some of these creole speech acts -- the polite as well as the ignorant ones while in pre school . We are yet to verify, revise and validate this. For example where children come from homes where obscene language is used frequently by the adults, the young ones acquire this way of speaking and use it as a means of defence or attack in communicating among themselves or to adults and even in the school environment. Several of my student teachers (Early Childhood) were embarrassed by this and developed ways of turning this behavior around.

The scheme that will be outlined in the next section will match verbal strategies with the type/s of talk/act.

***The STRATEGIES ARE MAINLY WAYS IN WHICH SPEAKERS USE WORDS APPROPRIATE TO THAT TYPE OF ACT. It may demonstrate a different way (culturally) about thinking about a text, matter or issue. It is basically a contextual Trinidadian creole way of seeing things. The relationship to literacy is that the strategies can be used (and are being used perhaps unconsciously)by the astute teacher/tutor to elucidate text written in English--as an oral component of that text to help teenagers' comprehension of written English . In this way it can enhance adult literacy.

**For young children (3+ to5/6) the appropriate strategies --and even those that they use among themselves can be investigated and developed for use with standard English text material --books, stories or for use in story telling and story creation,drama and conversation. One should note that children/teenagers out of a creole speaking background can comprehend Standard English far better than they can produce it. In the next section I'll put up the scheme as a note to myself. During the time of observing the two children in "Grandma's house" some of the strategies came into play.

How I did it...observing and assisting in the Early Literacy development of Angela and Camille for 4 to 5 years...1993 to 1997.

2004-07-02T01:00:00.001-07:00

I visited with them mainly on afternoons and on some nights when I stayed over at "our house" now called "Grandma's house". My mother (70+ at the time of this project) kept them while their parents were at work. I made notes of their sayings especially those that related to literacy. I made audio tapes of them in conversation with myself and their parents. Like all children of that age, they had a tremendous passion for play and we regularly visited my own home where I read books and stories aloud to them and where they made a lot of mess with paper,crayons and glue. I chatted with them and they used their "budding" Trinidadian Creole; we shared snacks,t.v shows and went often to the supermarket,the post office and the play park--all of this when they were between 2 and 5/6 years old, that is, from 1993 to 1997. Camille (cousin to Angela) came to stay with us when she was two (2).
*I wanted to eliminate the rough, "licks" aspect of literacy learning with children in a home environment and I was curious to see how young childen "connected with" Reading. "Grandpa"--my own father now also 70+-- participated actively in their literacy-at-home and had an influence in surprising and un-looked for ways--all this now without "licks".
*Sometimes I became a child with them and had to switch roles as auntie, playmate and teacher. Together with their parents I saw them through the joys and anxieties of entry into preschool and primary school as well as through their bouts of fever and colds. There was too, their participation in festivals, birthdays and family get togethers. The two moved rapidly through their own language development in this creole-speaking home.
**Reading aloud was the basis of their at- home literacy learning. Both parents (Sheila and Slim) read aloud to them regularly and chatted with them after work on evenings while they all cooled out in a relaxed fashion (called "liming") watching t.v. *Telling them stories before they fell asleep was another feature of this project. Both their parents and I made up stories or sang songs which made us laugh and they'd fall asleep sometimes in the middle of the story. *Angela "demanded" repeatedly..."Tell me how it was long time..." or "Tell me about..." a particular story, or family event or member. And their language grew. They seem to want to hear the same story repeatedly. They had stacks of picture books and heaps of toys that relatives living in the U.S. sent for them.
I saw my assistance as supplementary to their pre-school program. They interacted also with a host of other adults in "Grandma's house"--other uncles,aunts and cousins. They "wrote" all over the place...in the concreted yard with chalk and on huge sheets of paper with fat pencils and crayons. They repeated rhymes and stories they learned at school, sang their songs and had their pretend games with colourful toys and dolls and they chatted their way through all of this, an endless stream of chat with as much positive response as we the adults could muster. Having them chat in an uninbibited fashion and by our responding to this positively--although their parents and I were really tired many times--appears to have been a factor that fuelled their growth and confidence in language and literacy in this setting--"Grandma's house".
I interviewed their parents and nine other adults on their observations about this "chatterbox-in-literacy" phenomenon and I hope that the story that will unfold here can be the source of a study with a larger sample of children,especially with very young boys("boy chirrun")since there is an urgent need for this here in Trinidad and Tobago.

How it all began...understanding Chatterbox and Literacy Learning...

2004-06-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

**I don't want this to be academic although it concerns literacy learning in a selected Afro Trinidadian home. So parts of it will read like a journal. I want parents and teachers to be able to read it and be comfortable with it. **The background to "Chatterbox" is my own experience. This is partly in response to to an American friend who asked me: "How come you are so literate?"--it was an "academic" question. Future entries will describe literacy learning with two young children in the same home setting.
_____________________________________________________________________
**Merle Hodge's novel about growing up in Trinidad in the 1950's: "Crick Crack Monkey" describes social relations and literacy learning for poor Afro Trinidadian children.(click on the blog title to see notes by Marjorie Renick)
________________________________________________________________________

*The tradition of "doing lessons" started and still continue in our extended Afro-Caribbean family (Trinidad and Tobago) home. It was a tradition that you must "do lessons" or to get that "piece of paper"(a school certificate) to succeed in life. This was the motivating factor for studying at home where everything was rote learning. Still we learned.

My childhood was littered with books. My father was a book worm--God rest his soul. He had a key word "ambition"--and this was a hard thing for him to get his ten children to understand. He left us an ambitious legacy, a house full of crudely-built book shelves stacked with hundreds of school texts. These and school fees were where his slim earnings went. He woke us up to study on mornings before he left for work and "cut our tails" good and proper when we didn't complete book tasks or household chores. He detested disorder. The discipline--not the licks--was good for us.

He worked at a sugar factory for 40 years weighing canes and he tallied figures with both left and right hands. He got me my first penpal from New Zealand and inspired me to join the Children's Library in the town of San Fernando. He brought home the newspaper for us every day and made us read news aloud for him. The dictionary was staple diet. The value and the building of a tradition of literacy in the home is what is important here. Note this is an experience in one poor but "upwardly mobile-through-education" home.
The "licks"--blows with whips for learning-- is what people in my age cohort here in the Caribbean "cannot forgive". I understand it only now. Licks is a social ritual in this and in many societies. It was a part of the poor man's baggage for success and to teach lessons at home. I learned "endless" Latin, theorems (I don't even remember), French and English vocabulary. What remained with me though were my father's books (from English book clubs in the war days) that I read in secret crouched beneath his desk. I had to hide to read them because we children were forbidden to invade this private area. I read voraciously and with joy. I was about 12 years old. What wonderful worlds I visited and was caught only once.

*What remained too, was the anticipation of receiving letters from foreign lands which he brought for me from his sugar-factory office and my listening to strange-sounding, far-away broadcasts of BBC news when the radio came. I learned the value of this formal, school-type Literacy-at-home from him. It had its rewards in academic success.

MY escape was my maternal grandmother whose house was in the same yard and whose family came from up the islands --Nevis. My maternal grandfather came from Barbados. Their stories were gems of sweetness like the sugar cane; they told us of turn-of-the-twentieth century times e.g. of the days before the motor-cars came. My grandmother was a storehouse of stories, songs, riddles and games while friends plaited (braided) hair while sitting on her front on her steps. She kept a cloth purse with her coin money in her deep dress pocket and she never forgot a date or a transaction. She had a "hot mouth" and loved to scold and quarrel. She taught me the importance of greetings. She'd "hail out" her greetings especially on festival days..Christmas and New Years. We had to learn how to respond likewise.
She also had a fantastic memory and she taught me how to take a sip of rum and swirl it to the back of my throat before swallowing it--for the worms. These maternal relatives were an earthy island people who could tell you about yellow fever in Panama and of travelling to Trinidad in slow sailing boats on hot equally slow days. How fortunate I was. They taught us how to listen and without knowing it a rapid narrational style of speaking.

We only got a radio when I was a teenager in the late 50's but until then my mother was a great storyteller who had a lovely singing voice. The jokes, the liveliness, the earthy richness of these oral experiences live deep within me. This was my creole existence.
I lapped up my mother's stories (while she sewed)-- about her being chased by "Pa's cattle" when she went to water it,of the time when Billy John "ketch" a young alligator( thinking it was a 'guana) and "swing 'im on 'e shoulder" to bring it home to cook, of "green hills far away without a castle wall," of the many mansions in my father's house and of a land flowing with milk and honey.

And ever after (even now)happiness meant for me, standing as a child in a bright place up to my knees in sweetened condensed milk. I loved condensed milk. Every week she made me write the shop lists to go to purchase items in the shop and I learned how to talk to the market people using our creole market language and tones: bargaining.
The yard was a place of herbs for a variety of sicknesses and of stories about supernatural figures that captured and frightened us (the children).When the "la belles" (candleflies) lit up the dark nights we learned songs and riddles or played cards. Sometimes these maternal relatives hid us from the paternal licks. But my father was a bright man with a dream to succeed. This too was an inescapable strand in the tradition of literacy learning in our home--one aimed to succeed.

And then radio came...and with it the levelling of the hillocks where I played and ran with
the young goats. When hard cement covered the yard instead of grass,I literally grieved without anyone knowing.

**I still do not believe that earthy, creole-type verbal experiences should be torn away and eliminated from a child's learning in favour of the purely school-type,formal literacy learning in home or school settings especially for young Caribbean children with creole-speaking backgrounds. But should form a part of it. In later accounts I will explain this dichotomy better where Caribbean children are concerned.
The creole-type of experiences were rich and deep and the "lessons-type"(where more Standard English is used)were dry and harsh. It need not be so. *
*As a child I also learned to be curious about things, but I must not "ask too much-a question." And "you too full-a chat, you is a chatterbox? Hush!" (adult voices)-- even as I talked myself to sleep in my father's lap as a young child while he played draughts with his friends and at another time in the yard when I sought answers to questions from the other adults.

The Chatterbox Experiment with Language and Literacy--report of a five-year project

2004-05-30T01:58:00.000-07:00

The entries that follow are simply notes and are linked to our website: "St. Mary's Online...Your Caribbean Literacy Portal"

The extensive search lists on the above site can be consulted for substantiating points from the Literature.

*The term "chatterbox" when used in relation to young children frequently connotes emptiness...a noisy flow of words without any real attachment to the children's attempts at making meaning.
**But meaning-making should lie the heart of their "experimenting" with spoken language. And their chatting during literacy tasks in a free, uninhibited,fashion can assist in their literacy development--this depends on how adults respond to their attempts. If we view the children's chatting as a "humbug" or as "simple entertainment",or that they should not be heard then, we ouselves are "spoiling" their growth in language.

**This meaning-making "apparatus" most likely comes with the language they acquire in their homes and communities---in the complex roles and relationships which occur during talk:

* they learn to select, respond and express content and the how of talk.
*they learn the attitudes and values that adhere to spoken and written text

(Some more notes to myself:) *It is within this "language nest" that early literacy learning occurs in a home setting. *In Trinidad and Tobago as elsewhere, young children learn about spoken language in the variety of contexts in which this occurs around them in interaction with adults: e.g. for praise, complaint,narration, for defence/as a weapon, for performance--as in songs, stories,jokes, assuming roles and much more.
*All this as speech around them shifts frequently along a continuum--from an English-based creole (which they are rapidly acquiring) and International English--more heard than "spoken" and used for more formal purposes.
*They learn too, the listening/participatory postures that accompany these "scripts." (All of these points can be researched.)
*We should know how best to respond orally to our children at this stage in order to help along their language and literacy growth.

Children experiment with the above "modes"(?) in a "language nest" while chattering away in a variety of contexts. And literacy in the home can/does and should occur within this kind of "verbal play". This blog will record what this writer has observed of a unique kind of language-literacy connection in a Trinidadian home.