By Adam Berkin
What's the best
way to approach the theme of families for upper-grade and middle school
students? Instructor talked with fifth-grade teacher Sandy Kaser
of Tucson, Arizona, about a family studies unit she developed to encourage
her students to explore different ethnic groups and types of families.
Sandy has a diverse group of students in her classroom, including Native
Americans, Hispanics, African Americans and Caucasians, but she's had
mixed reactions from them on past multicultural units. Sandy started
talking with her colleagues about a family studies unit that would draw
students in. The following activities were the result of her search.
Sandy said this unit, which was also spotlighted in If This Is Social
Studies, Why Isn't It Boring (Stenhouse, 1994), was one of the most
successful in her 17 years of teaching.
Start with Reading
Sandy loves using literature in the classroom, so for her family studies
unit she assembles a variety of resources into "text sets" focusing
on family sub-themes such as fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers,
grandparents, family stories, and family issues (including foster families
and families with people with disabilities). Sandy stores the materials
for each theme including quick-to-read picture books, Articles,
and poetry, as well as longer fiction and nonfiction, in a separate
plastic bin. To introduce the sets, Sandy schedules 45 minutes for small
groups to browse through each set and choose one to read more thoroughly.
During the next two weeks, each group pores through its bin, reading,
discussing, and recording responses in logs before selecting several
subjects to research in depth. In the end, Sandy has each group present
two of the issues they discussed. Each year, Sandy is amazed at how
the text sets inspire students to share their own family stories.
Raise the Comfort Level
Kids can feel uneasy when discussing personal issues such as family
backgrounds and cultural identities. To help them feel more comfortable,
Sandy has the following suggestions.
- Be willing to
share about your own experiences. Sandy makes a point about telling
students about her own family history, including the fact that she
- Use literature
to introduce sensitive issues. Sandy found that discussions on racism
developed when she read Angel Child, Dragon Child by Michele
Maria Surat, which is about a Vietnamese girl who starts attending
an American school, and that issues of homelessness came up naturally
when she read Eve Bunting's Fly Away Home, which describes
a father and son who live in an airport.
Get to Know Each Other
Sandy has students interview each other to gather information and to
practice interview skills for future activities. Before they start asking
questions, Sandy asks her students to check out interviews on television
and in magazines. Students then brainstorm what they want to know about
each other. They publish their completed interviews in a classroom newspaper.
Where's My Name From?
Each year, Sandy asks her students to find out how they got their names.
(You can use the What's in a Name? reproducible
for this activity.) "Fabian was surprised to find out he was named after
a famous singer," she says. Not only do students like solving their
name mystery, but the activity encourages them and their parents to
talk about other memories.
I Remember When...
Sandy has her students collect family memory stories by asking their
parents to relate a memory such as "I remember when you were born,"
or "I remember when you broke your foot." Students record these stories
in writing for their classmates; later, Sandy collects the stories for
a book. To help students tell their stories orally, Sandy invites a
storyteller to class to share drama, music, and movement techniques.
Her class also creates a "story rope": students tie objects reflecting
memories onto a rope and then tell the stories behind the objects.
Time Line of My Family
Sandy has her students explore their own lives and the lives of their
families through time lines. The students first do a time line of their
life from birth to their current grade. They record such events as learning
to read, learning to ride a bike, losing a first tooth, and starting
school. But this is merely a warm-up for a 100-year time line of their
family's history. Since most students can't immediately recite a century
of family history, this project prompts family research and lots of
reminiscences and discussions about cultural heritage. Events students
record on their time lines include immigration dates, moves across town
and across the country, work history, marriages and divorces, and births
and deaths. In addition to recording these events on their time lines,
students post objects such as photos, postcards, and souvenirs. Sandy
invites students to include as many events as they want, but they have
to write up the stories behind at least ten of them. Since Sandy has
begun doing this project with her students, her class has heard stories
of family heroes, war stories, memories of living on reservations, and
more. Sandy points out to her students that many of the stories they
share make reference to other events of the time period, such as "around
when we saw the Beatles" or "the year Kennedy died." This often prompts
students to learn about historical events.
After reading Everybody Cooks Rice by Norah Dooly (Carolrhoda,
1991) and Bread, Bread, Bread by Ann Morris (Lothrop, 1989),
Sandy and her students collect recipes from as many different cookbooks
as they can find and also ask family members for suggestions. Then Sandy
has each student select one bread recipe and one rice recipe to prepare
at home and bring in to share with the class. On the feast day, the
kids select music and light candles to create a festive mood. Afterwards,
the class collects all the recipes in a cookbook that kids take home
to their families.
This Is My Place
At a reading conference, Sandy discovered what is now one of her favorite
family studies tools: a book called My Place by N. Wheatley
and D. Rawlins (Kane/Miller, 1992). The book is a collection of stories
about a town in Australia, illustrated with maps. The story begins with
the main character saying, "Hi, my name is and this is my place." On
the opposite page is a informal map that the main character has labeled
with important places, including a tree at the center of the map. Each
story is narrated by a family member from a different generation and
includes a map to match. The book starts in the present and goes back
in time by ten-year increments to Aboriginal times and ultimately to
a time when there were no people, just the tree.
Sandy divides her
class into small groups and asks each group to read two stories from
My Place each day, then share with the whole class what they
notice about how the place and characters change over time. When they
finish the book, Sandy asks students to look over their list of observations
and divide it into categories such as jobs, historical events, family
relations, and Australian words. Students divide into groups corresponding
to these categories, re-read the book looking for information related
to their category, and decide on a way to share their information with
the whole school. For example, one year the group that investigated
the tree made a big tree out of a colored paper and put dates on the
leaves. Underneath each leaf they drew a picture and wrote a narrative
of what was happening to the tree in that time period.
Soon after Sandy
introduced My Place, one student independently chose to write
her own version of the book. The student told her own family story and
drew her "my place" map of her neighborhood, labeling important places
such as "This is where I get off the bus to buy a soda every day." The
other kids liked her book so much, they all decided to write their own!
Sandy finds that biographies tie family studies and a literary genre
together. Each year, she brings in a collection of biographies and says
to students, "Here is a box of people's lives read about anyone's
life you are interested in." Since the students have just written about
their own lives, they are excited to find out about other people's.
They browse through the biographies and select at least one to read
completely. Then, since Sandy wants students to talk in small groups
about the biographies, she helps them organize themselves into discussion
groups focusing on such categories as Artists and Authors, People of
Great Courage, Famous People in History, and Western Heroes. While they
read and talk, Sandy asks students to think: How did this person's family
influence him or her? What can I learn from this person's life that
I can use in my own? For example, one of her struggling students who
read a biography of Abraham Lincoln concluded, "I learned that Lincoln
made a lot of mistakes along the way, the same as me."
Show and Sing
To finish the unit with a flourish, Sandy invites parents for an art
show and choral performance. Students display all the projects they've
worked on, including time lines, "my place" maps, and "I remember when"
stories, and perform songs about family. Last year, even the superintendent
turned out for the show!
AGES & STAGES:
"This is an age when
a father can develop a special relationship with his son, and a mother
can nurture her relationship with her daughter."
Stanley Greenspan, MD, Playground Politics (Addison-Wesley,
"During early adolescence,
it is normal for children to dissociate themselves from their families.
Finding their own identity means rejecting the family from which they
once derived their identity."
Gail A. Caissy, Early Adolescence (Plenum Press,