Lec 10 MIT CMS.930 Media, Education and the Marketplace

hello I'm Mary Rutter from the Harvard Kent School in Charlestown and I teach kindergarten I use the star Festival CD-ROM as part of our unit on Japan and places in the world I also use it as a connection between Family Life Family roots and just to make the adventure more real we start our adventure on our airplane which the kids painted and designed and then we prepare for our trip by Kathy in our suitcases which of course are made of paper since kindergarten is the paper capital of the world inside the suitcase is a plain piece of white paper and the children are asked to draw the things that they think they will need on their trip and sometimes you get what they would need some children want to bring all the toys they own and one of the boys this year wanted to bring an ice cream machine unfortunately when he went through customs in Japan they would not let them in they made him take it out of his suitcase of course I am the Customs official um after we prepare we also have our airline tickets and since we will be traveling to several places on the earth on the world um there are several categories that it lists the places we'll we will be going Tokyo is our first stop Although our trip will bring us all the way to hiratska which is where the star Festival takes place um the children have a ticket in their boarding pass and quite a few children really understand what a boarding pass is so when they receive this they thought the trip was almost real a few of the children went home and said I'm going to Japan tomorrow but you don't need to worry Mom because I'm going to be home by eight o'clock tonight so I also issued them a passport put their picture in it had them sign their name check to see if they knew their address because this is an important fact factoy the kindergarten children are expected to learn a few didn't know went home and found out their birth date again a few didn't know left a space on the back for the stamps for when they go through customs so as you can see we are in Japan so in the afternoon because it's an 18-hour flight from Boston we void the ship we boy the Airship just before we're leaving and for the day and I collect their tickets and their suitcases and Stow them under Ford and behind the airplane is seats if they sit in rows just as they would in a an airplane and they say oh oh when are we going to be in Japan and I I will tell them you have to go home tonight going to bed in your own bed and when you come back in the morning we will be almost in Japan so they come in the following morning and when they came in the Japanese house is up so we'll talk about that in a few minutes before we start our trip I want the children to know where in the world they are and where they've come from so we make a big mural map which they help paint of course you will notice that some of the continents I'm quite correct because when they get the paint in their hand they tend to start painting areas that should be water and end up to be land and land that should be water while land that ends up to be water so but it has a general feeling for it and I send home a questionnaire asking the parents because most of the children in the class come from other countries in fact just about everybody in America comes from another country if you trace back far enough and they are asked just to write the child's name and if you have I mentioned Mom Dad grandparents what countries they come from and when they come in I've already used the same pictures that we have on the passports to make a little card which will mount on our map with a line that will go from the girl's name a boy's name to Boston to wherever they came from so the children will actually be able to see where in the world their family came from and it's quite interesting and they've become very proud in fact the parents came in when they saw the map up and said oh this is where I come from this is so they didn't know I was going to ask them the question so they'll I think they'll really be thrilled when they see their kids up at the name connected I think it's just important because it gives them a sense of you know where where they came from and it also sort of gives value to their background it was interesting that I sent home because we will be doing this paper um and we will be doing a family tree but I didn't ask for a family tree one of the kids came back with it all written on the back of the paper so I thought this is perfect because when we start looking at shigeru's family tree and we started doing our own here one has it's all done only we'll probably do it on a bigger piece of drawing paper so you can see it and I'll have him script the words so I think that um it's interesting the things you come out with and the things that come out of the study because I want to go to hiratska because part of our adventure in Japan is the big festival and what we will be doing as we travel with Shigeru through the different points going to the train station or from the train station on the bus looking to see how it's the same as what they're used to or how it's different from what they know they were thrilled to see the subway station the train station because they noticed right away it didn't look like a train station that they are familiar with and um they could see the little shops in the background so they were wow that's really pretty so I think that's um interesting that now they're thinking of what they know and they're learning something different I'm going to bring you over to our house I should sit on the floor but I won't because I'll never get up again um this is hurray haruko and she's named after a little girl I met in Japan and I went on a visit and so when I came back I thought kids like to relate to other kids and before I introduce Shigeru on the um CD haruko introduces her grandmother's house because I don't want the children thinking that every child in Japan lives in a house that's a traditional Japanese style house that most of the children when they talk to them would probably live in an apartment but they might they would probably have a tatami mat on the floor and they might have the kadatsu um at their table or they might have a Westin table so I think it's important that they know some of the things that um the the children in Japan are doing now in fact we have Japanese epals which is really a great great deal of fun they're first graders but they are kind enough to write to us I show um harako in her regular clothes but I have this little angel that was sitting up here and the kids all said what is that what is that and then they said she has wings she has wings so I said oh what do you think this is and they recognize right away she's an angel and I said why would I want to have her around and oh she's good luck and I said but what's she wearing and we talked about she has the kimono on and she has the key tissues so it's sort of like a tie between the old and the new and I think the CD-ROM does that a lot when you see the older pictures and um you know the festival dress uh you know I think it's important for them to recognize it uh I tie in a lot of literature and I introduced The Story by saying it's her favorite so they think this is great and she liked this story and they sit with her after the story is read and um we'll reread it or go through the pages together they'll all sit around the table and try to oh look at the pictures and talk to her they were we had our friends in and we were singing songs together and they were making our hands clap because they wanted her to you know we're well we're doing we're clapping they wanted her to clap so they were like really including her as part of the classroom I think it's important for the children to really become involved in things to make it important to them um we and I told them today they noticed the festival decorations on the opening screen and done some of the pictures that they saw and they said oh look at that especially the dragon look at the dragon I said oh that's part of the festival and we're traveling on this train to go to Nebraska because we're going to be part of the festival and we will plan at the end of uh two weeks of reading stories about Japan true and mostly folked a lot of folk tales they are it allows them to process the story tell what it's about they pick out their favorite part they read it and they thrilled me today they read they they read the um Wise Old Woman and it sort of teaches why um that it's so important to respect elderly and they took their favorite part and then they all stood and they started to write all their sounding out their words which is we're doing right as workshops so this is like a big thing I was so proud of them and they're going oh I got that and I could read it so I think it's um you know even though we're doing Japan we're still doing language arts we're still doing writing so um I try to keep that connection and keep it tied in so I told them that the festival we will be having a festival and we will need to do all the decorations just like they see in the movie and um or film and that we will be inviting our Pals down the hall to come in and partake of all the festivities and I said um because I knew I didn't want to have five kindergarten groups all in here at once I said you know it takes a few days so we'll probably have it several days with one class that you know each City so they were oh okay we're ready so I think they're I think this is really going to be a great adventure all the past years I've done it it's been a learning experience for the children and for myself they always find a new angle or a different part to um key in on and this especially this class I think they're really keyed in on just they really think they're there they really and I think that hearing the noises seeing the sights going on the bus ride seeing the fish maggot I have to tell you the fish market the girls saw the fish market one girl with I love fish sticks and so I'm like they're cutting the fish up into big section I said oh that's nice well you'll see all the fish later and she goes I'm and I said well this is where it comes from this is what happens before it's made into fish sticks so here we'll be talking about how food comes to the table you know what happens it doesn't just materialize into fish sticks we didn't just go out to the river and pull up the fish sticks so I think it's important for um you know to see that we need food people in Japan need food people in China need food we basically are all different but we all have the same kinds of needs so um I don't know it's an adventure you want to see the old picture this is a class I had that even at the very end of the day they were trying to work because I totally identified with Shigeru on the film and they were looking at it and even when they were had their clothes on and they're waiting for their parents to take them home they would still go and explore in different parts of the um computer do I have a minute to tell you about the book sorry I so taught this is a project I was involved in it's a real I mean really adventure and so um this is the story of Shigeru when he was in Japan because the story on the CD-ROM is when he's grown up so this takes all the information from the CD-ROM and makes it into a story that a teacher or a parent a librarian could read to the children and it shows real pictures and it also shows beautiful drawings and I think that um just it's a story that about his family before he left and sort of how he had a very happy joyful life with his family and he's after it shows them all the things he does that is going to the shrine fishing with his grandfather um visiting his grandfather's Shoe Shop things that were just an integral part of his life going to the model shop and then to have you know when he's nine or ten to be taken from his home roots and just brought over into a very strange world where he didn't speak the language and he didn't you know really understand or know any of the culture because he wasn't exposed to it and then to have to deal with that and how he quickly became more Americanized that after a short or a year or so when um he found out that a letter he had sent to his grandfather was totally in in English and his grandfather couldn't read it and he didn't hadn't even realized that he had done that so um I think it a lot of the children I have bought bilingual children and a lot of them have um you know two languages or even three languages and I think this sort of really they understand that maybe sometimes I say things to them they don't quite understand what it is because it's not familiar to them but this sort of connects to their own their own life and I think that when you see Shigeru going back into harotska and visiting the old haunts that he went to and looking at the old photographs you can see um you know how much he changed and how much he grew and how he would have that feeling he's not quite sure which culture he belongs to and maybe that's how a lot of our children feel