Foreign language study, with emphasis in critical thinking, reading and writing.

29 September 2002

10-11

English (with bits of Mayan)

Foreign Language

This lesson is intended to introduce the written language of the Mayans to the students. The students will look at the symbols that make up the alphabet, we will try to pronounce the symbols and finally write some words using these symbols.

Because of the difficulty of the subject matter, this lesson will be conducted in English to high functioning English speakers. The students are also able to communicate a bit in Spanish, as this is their Spanish class.
This lesson will be conducted as a classroom exercise, teacher will lead instruction and activities.
Because the material is highly foreign to all students, this should be a teacher led lesson. The final activity of the lesson will be constructing words from the Mayan alphabet, in this activity they are free to work with each other if they should chose.
This lesson is one of several which will make a unit of study of cultures of Meso America. As a lanugage teacher I am introducing the students to the indigenous languages of the peoples of Mexico.

Cognitive: To use their knowledge of phonetics to understand the difficult and foreign hyroglyphic writing style of the Mayans.
Social/Affective: To learn of the native populations of Mexico. To understand the complexity of their cultures, specifically in language.
Listening: To listen to pronounciation that we will learn of Mayan, the sounds of the vowels and consonants.
Reading: We will be using some handouts that explain the basics of this writing system. The directions of how to chose the appropriate Mayan symbol to represent English words and names requires very close reading and critical thinking.
Writing: The students can, (their choice) write their name or any other words by copying the hyroglyphic system, or they may cut out the symbols and sequence them together to create words.

Anticipatory Set: A word written on the board in the hyropglyphics that says a fun sentance to students, to spark interest and curiosity about the writing system.
Because the students are learning about these populations in their other classes, we do not need to do much review on who the Mayans are, but we will continue our discussion of how they communicated and what they spoke. We will discuss for what reasons the Mayans communicated--rules, histories, conquests, genealogies and where and how they wrote--on buildings, clay tablets, in hyroglyphic symbols and drawings. Also, who wrote, not the common person knew how to write, only scholars, religious leaders, basic literacy was known by the merchant class.
Closure is having fun with the language and using it on a personal level, they can write their names using the symbols or any words they chose to write.

The lesson should not be challenging for an English learner as we will all be learning this new writing system together. In fact, some English learners may be able to help the class if they are accustomed to writing in characters and using symbols instead of letters for words. The reading on the interpretation of the writing level is somewhat advanced, therefore the students can work with each other if they chose to understand the instructions.

Any special needs student will be accommodated as determined appropriate.

www.halfmoon.org/.syl/logo.gif
www.angelfire.com/ca/humanorgins/index.html

Assessment for this lesson will be simple. I will record each student's effort for the day in trying to figure out how to create words and names with the tools of the Mayan glyphics they have. Each student will receive a check, check minus or check plus for the days activities.