The Way You Speak Depends on the Situation (Teaching Tip)

Image by mp3waxx.com via Flickr

I got the idea for today's Teaching Tip as I read the memoir by rapper, actor, and songwriter, Common. His book is entitled "One Day  It'll All Make Sense"

There are a few passages in the memoir that were written by his mother. When I read this one, I immediately thought of how it could be used as a discussion point for the classroom.

"I remember one time when Rashid was maybe eight years old, he overheard me on the telephone talking to a professor . . . When I got off the phone, Rashid was giving me a funny look.

"Mama, how come you talking white?"

It took all of my composure not to bust out laughing. He was giving me that little-boy serious look, like he was deeply concerned.

"I'm not 'talking white,' honey. I'm talking with someone from the university, and when I do that I change up my vocabulary."

He still looked confused.

"Look, Rashid, do you talk to me the same way you talk to your cousin?"

He shook his head.

"Do you talk to your cousin the same way you talk to God when you pray?"

He shook his head again.

"Well, see, that's what I'm talking about.l You change the way you speak depending on whom you're addressing."

Since he's been grown, he's mentioned that moment to me several times.

"Now I understand," he says. "The words you choose matter."

 I couldn't help but read that passage and think about using it in a classroom discussion.

Part of the English program requires us to teach students how to communicate orally. You can check the curriculum document to see how you could apply this quotation to your specific grade.

One of the Grade 7 expectations from the Oral Communication strand states that students need to be able to "demonstrate an understanding of appropriate speaking behaviour in most situations, adapting contributions and responses to suit the purpose and audience."

After reading the above passage, you could brainstorm a variety of situations or people that the students would have to interact with and how they would speak differently for each. You could have them role-play discussions with friends at the park, a police officer, a store clerk, a judge, their grandmother, etc.

I hope you enjoy my Teaching Tip Tuesday series. There are over 100 useful tips, tricks, and lessons that you can access at any time. See you here next week for a new one.

Arctic Air Soars

I like uniquely Canadian television and that is precisely the reason that I have been enjoying Arctic Air.

Arctic Air is an ensemble drama that can be seen Tuesdays at 9:00 on CBC. The show is set in Northern Canada and revolves around a small airline that has outdated planes. The pilots must navigate through the tough weather, small dirt runways, and small communities.

It is nice to see First Nation characters on prime time television. Adam Beach plays Bobby Martin, and at first, he's not a very likable character. He seems to be more concerned about making money than having any connection to his hometown or to his people. (Spoiler Alert)

Bobby comes back to negotiate a mining deal with a local land owner. Just when it looks like he is about to sell out his friend, he has a change of heart and does the right thing. When he finds out that the airline that his now deceased father had founded is in a bit of financial difficulty, Bobby decides to stay and help out the struggling airline.

I've really been enjoying the show. The pilot episode didn't completely blow me away. It had a few lines of contrived dialogue but it did help set up the theme and mood of the series. The second episode is where things really started to gel and last week's episode was full of suspense and great drama.

It's rare that we get such uniquely Canadian programming on our televisions. I think we need to support shows like this; shows that put First Nation peoples in the spotlight, shows that tell our stories and are set in our country.

If you have ever had to travel to Northern Canada, this series will bring back memories of riding in those small charter planes. If you haven't, you will get a nice glimpse of what it's like to live in a remote area of the North.

I hope you give this series a chance. The fourth episode airs tomorrow night at 9:00 on CBC. You can also catch full episodes online at CBC.ca.

Enjoy!

Know Your History - The Complete Second Season

Here it is, The Complete Second Season of Know Your History, your monthly dose of hip-hop knowledge.

You can download all 12 episodes from the 2011 season in one handy zipped file. This is 6 hours of hip-hop radio brought to you by DOPEfm and your host and producer of the program, Chase March.

We covered a lot of topics last year from sampling to comedy to rap battles to personification to gender roles. If you missed the shows when they aired on the radio, or you missed the podcasts, I hope you will take the time to download the complete series sets.

Download Season One of Know Your History

Download Season Two of Know Your History

Season Three starts really soon. Look forward to hearing twelve more episodes this year that dive deep into hip-hop culture. It's my way to share some of the classic material that this art form has produced while highlighting the significance of songs and artists from this rich, cultural history that is hip-hop.

Batman: The Mixtape

Batman deserves a mixtape, doesn't he? After all he does to protect the city from crime, the least we could do is honour him with a mixed CD.

The tape starts out with the theme from the television series and then moves in to Snoop Dogg's "Batman and Robin." The song blends into The Last Emperor's brilliant take on rappers battling super-heroes and villians in "Secret Wars." We then have two songs from the soundtracks of Batman films.

Katy Perry's "Hot N Cold" seems to fit with the persona of Bruce Wayne and how he has to hide certain aspects of his life to protect his secret identity. The next song totally fits with the theme since Bruce Wayne is a Billionaire.

Side B starts off with a track from Robin's point of view. It's a pretty interesting take on being a "Sidekick." And when Nazareth sings, "Now you're messing with a song of a b*tch," they could definitely be taking about Batman. I certainly wouldn't want to have to go against him in battle.

I originally made this tape as a birthday present for my brother. He's a huge Batman fan and owns hundreds of the comics.

I hope you enjoy this mix. It can easily fit on to one CD or you can download the mix to play on your iPod or MP3 players. All of the songs blend into each other but they are on their own track so you can skip through songs at your leisure or listen to the mix straight through.

Download Batman: The Mixtape

Lighter or Darker Words

I found this excellent teaching tip today on the local message board. You need to be a member of my school board to access the site so I thought I would share this tip with you here. It was originally posted by Dr. Megan Cyrisse Parry-Jamieson.

"Hi all -- I've been having good results with word work in my grade 7 class - the first thing they loved I stole from a colleague (Christina Young) -- I hit up Home Depot for the out of style paint chip strips. Each kid got one -- and got to put one word on one of the colours. Then they had to come up with 'lighter' or 'darker' versions of the same word -- they loved it, kept the strips, and I've heard them talking to each other about 'that word is too light, you need a shade darker' -- so it stuck! woo hoo!"

I tried this activity out myself. I really like how it gets the kids brainstorming about different words that mean the same thing. We can introduce the term synonym during this lesson and get the kids using a thesaurus.

I thought I'd come up with words for fight as an example. This is what I came up with.

You can see that at the bottom of the paint strip I used the most tame version of the word fight I could come up with.

• Scrimmage is a friendly game or competition. 
• Scrap is a word we often use to describe a small fight between two people. Sometimes a scrap will break out during a game or a scrimmage.
• Match is a more formal word for a game than scrimmage (like a boxing match)
• Bout is also used in boxing and we can see that imagery with this word.
• Fight is a strong word and you can see that we've been working on way up the strip so that as the colours get darker, the definition of the word does as well. 
• Brawl means lots of people are involved in the fight.
• And finally a Melee is used to describe a fight that is utter chaos and involves a large group of people.

I think if I were going to do this activity with younger students, I would give them a small list of words to choose from. This way they wouldn't be overwhelmed by all of the choices in the thesaurus. 

Megan also had something else to share on the message board . . .

The other thing I've discovered are the word scafolding organzers at freeology.com -- I've added several to my website under 'student stuff' and 'daily 5' -- the top 3 are word work specific -- find a word, the definition, several examples, and several non-examples, where they will find it, and how they will connect it

I'm finding it awesome in terms of improving word choice, but it's also really helping for concept retention and vocab comprehension in my rotary science classes -- for kids to see that 'conductor' is something that transfers energy well, NOT the guy driving the train.... helps. Also helps when they make the link between Conductor and Contact -- build in reminders.... my ESL kids are attending to specifics better -- whenever they incorrectly substitute a visually similar but not related word they get a word sheet -- feel free to pull them off my site -- they're free for teacher use etc. from freeology.com

More Teaching Resources

• Freeology (Dr. Megan Cyrisse Parry-Jamieson website)
• Teaching Tip Tuesday Archive (Silent Cacophony)
• The Book Shook (Great site with tons of resources and ideas)

Spotify: A Review

Image by Dekuwa via Flickr

Many online music players have become available in the last few years, including popular sites such as Pandora and I Heart Radio. With the rise of social-networking sites, some players have been developed for the purpose of listening to and sharing music on these sites. Spotify is one of the leaders of the social-network music players, and it deserves its place near the top.

How it Works

New users must install the player on their personal computers when they sign up. After that, users can sign in through Facebook or through any computer. Your personal music library will be available through the app when you sign in through your home computer, but you'll be limited to Spotify's library if you sign in elsewhere. However, Spotify's library includes over 15 million tracks, so you shouldn't have a hard time finding what you want. The free membership option includes 20 hours of streaming music, but you'll have to pay $4.99 a month if you want to get unlimited music and hear it without advertising. For $9.99 a month, you also get access to an offline mode, mobile access, and exclusive content.

The Pros

Spotify offers an easy way to listen to free music without resorting to illegally downloading it. The service is also a great way to share your musical interests with friends through Facebook or Twitter, which can also help you to discover new music. There are a variety of features, which allow you to organize your music and to discover new favorites. For example, you can create playlists of your favorite artists, find new music by clicking on "related artists" or by browsing "artist radio" channels, and learn about your favorite musicians with biographies. You can also find new music by browsing songs according to their popularity. Searching is easy, and you can find music by artist, song, or album.

The Cons

There are few drawbacks to the service, and those that exist are based more on personal preferences rather than actual problems with the service. For example, though you can connect with friends to share musical tastes and to learn about new music, you can only search for friends through your Facebook connections. You can't browse user profiles on the site. The interface is easy to use and looks quite similar to the iTunes music library interface. The drawback is that it is quite text heavy and does not use many images, such as large logos, album covers, or artist photos. Those who are looking for an intuitive way to discover new artists may be a bit disappointed by the lack of features.

Overall, Spotify is a great service with a wide variety of free, streaming music available. I was able to find all the artists I could think of, even some that were a bit obscure. There were soundtracks and karaoke versions of music, as well. Though the basic service only offers basic features, you can listen to the music you want to hear and share it easily on Facebook or Twitter. The drawbacks of the service are minimal, and users will find a lot of great benefits in the service.

About the author

Amanda Tradwick is a grant researcher and writer for CollegeGrants.org. She has a Bachelor's degrees from the University of Delaware, and has recently finished research on scholarships and grants for women and federal grants for graduate students.

Lissa Monet at The Stylus Awards 2011

Lissa Monet: "How are you guys doing? Here for another interview?"

Chase: "We're doing awesome. Yeah, it was a great interview with you last year. Did you get a chance to hear our International Women's Day show we did earlier this year?"

Lissa Monet: "No, I didn't."

Chase: "You should check it out. We dedicated the entire overnight show to Women in Hip Hop."

Lissa Monet: "It's still up there?"

Chase: "Yeah. You can check out the podcasts and articles. It was really cool. So, you are nominated again this year?"

Lissa Monet: "Yep. I'm up for two awards, Female DJ of the Year, and Mixtape, which DJ P-Plus and I won last night for 'Love Letters and Broken Hearts.'"

Chase: "Congratulations! That's awesome. I remember last year we talked about the Girl DJ category and now you are outside of that as well. That is very cool to see."

Lissa Monet: "Exactly."

Chase: "I mean, it's good we have the Female DJ category, but it's nice to see just "DJ." I'm all for getting rid of the gender terms like actor and actress. Just get rid of them. A person who acts is an actor, you know?"

Lissa Monet: "Absolutely."

Chase: "What do you have to say to any young girls listening right now?"

Lissa Monet: "Just be persistent and consistent. Do what you love, and the passion will reap the rewards for you. It's one of those things where if you do it for all the right reasons, it will come back to you ten-fold."

Chase: "For sure. Good luck with everything tonight for your second nomination and congratulations for the award you got last night."

Lissa Monet: "Thank you very much."

Chase: "It's always great seeing you."

Lissa Monet: "See you next year."