LIT – Page 5 – UAS MAT Program ~ 2016 Cohort

The Singer in the Stream

I really enjoyed stepping outside my usual approach toward planning music lessons to incorporate the comfort of a children’s book in my class time. I have witnessed my former mentor teacher using books that accompanied sing-alongs and have found that there is something so pleasant about sitting around in a “story circle”, looking with giant, awe-filled eyes at the book pages while singing. It is a magical thing.

With that image in my mind, I picked up a book called The Singer in the Stream by Katherine Hocker and Mary Willson and immediately envisioned a classroom of elementary or secondary students staring at its beautiful artwork and fact-filled pages with excitement. The most exciting part to me, though, is the topic of the book. This book sheds light about the American dipper, a bird known for its long, complicated songs that can be heard over even the roar of a waterfall. The reason the dipper can produce a healthy forte sound for such a long time is because it can sing while breathing both in and out!

After reading the book with my class, I imagine us researching the dipper’s song and discussing the different aspects of the glorious music it makes. What is the pitch range? Is there a distinct rhythm or tempo to its song? Does it have a clear melody? What is the texture and tone of the bird’s voice? This study and discussion would open students’ minds to the beautiful sounds of nature we so often tune out.

This could lead to a great outdoor activity where we retreat in nature and listen for sounds that could easily be missed if one were not truly listening. Students can describe every sound they hear and collect audio samples of them. This can turn into a great musical composition assignment that could be an individual, small group, or whole-class project.

I love how this book goes across to another subject area- reading and science- and also encourages observations of the world around us- after all, that is what inspires us to make and create music!

Wave of the Sea-Wolf

The Wave of the Sea-Wolf by Jack Wisniewski is a beautifully-illustrated story with an important historical message. However, Wisniewski was a non-Native author, and while the story celebrates Tlingit culture and laments the destructive impact of Western contact, it is a bit careless in its use of Tlingit legend. In the book’s notes, Wisniewski admits that he uses the myth of Gonakadet (the seawolf) in an inaccurate way by attributing destructive earthquakes and tsunamis to his swimming routes.

Despite this, there is a relevant lesson to be taught from this book, which is based on a historical event involving a massive earthquake and French contact with the region. The story and its illustrations evoke some pretty powerful emotions concerning destruction and loss of culture. I thought it would be interesting to explore the changes contact brought to this region compared to other regions in Alaska, or the difference in impact between French, Russian, English contact, etc.

Seabird in the Forest

When given the task today to pick up a children’s book– and figure out how I would use it in a classroom, I chose Seabird in a Forest by Joan Dunning. In general, it is a story in response to the mystery of a small seabird called the marbled murrelet. It took a long time for scientists to figure out where they nested. When they finally realized that the nests were far from the sea, and rather in the middle of old-growth forests inland, these scientists were fascinated. Why do the birds do this? Why do they raise their chicks high up in trees far from the ocean? Why do the adults go to the ocean each day for fish, and bring the food back inland to their young?

As a social studies teacher, I immediately thought of using the same types of questions raised in the story, but in talking about people. Throughout history, what are trends of why people move and where they are moving? I would hope students would think about things such as hunter and gatherer lifestyles, herdsman, subsistence. I would also want students to think of things such as globalization, economics and climate change. Why have people chosen to live places? Why was where we are decided upon as a town?

Although this story fits much easier into a science class, I could draw parallels from it into a social studies class.

Go Home, River

I chose the picture book Go Home, River, by James Magdanz and Dianne Widom. This book is set in the late 1800s, and follows an Inupiaq father and son on a journey along the Kobuk river to a trade fair on the coast. Along the way, the young boy learns about the cycle of the river: flowing from the mountains to the sea, then returning as fog and rain to the mountains to begin the cycle again. The narrative of the book follows the flow of the river, and when it is time for the father and son to go home to the mountains, the father explains that the river is going home as well.

As I’m teaching English, I don’t have to do much stretching to use children’s literature in a lesson. There’s a lot of simple but effective description in this book, so I think I could use it as part of a lesson on visual imagery – students can identify specific language that conjures up an image, and then write their own visual imagery. Since the book’s narrative ends by returning the characters to their starting point, I could also use it as part of a lesson on structure, particularly in a creative writing assignment. I could have the students write a poem or prose poem about some aspect of the natural world, using a symmetrical or cyclical structure. (Obviously I’d have to give them more guidance than that, but that’s the general idea.)

Hide and Sneak

As soon as I saw Hide and Sneak by Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak I was transported back to my own home and the small shelf that now serves as place of pride for our most cherished childrens books. As a kid I was captivated by the vibrant colors, and intrigued by the way the little girl found her way back home.

Rereading the book as an adult was very enlightening–I recognized more of myself in the somewhat spacey girl who is directionally challenged but loves a good adventure. But more than that, I could see where echoes of more widely taught mythology surface in this cautionary tale. ‘Don’t get lost or the Ijiraq will hide you from us forever!’ is exactly the kind of story parents would tell their kids to keep them close to home, where the dangers of the natural environment are less likely to claim their lives.

I think it would be really easy to take this book as a jumping off point into cautionary tales as a genre, drawing on the class’s previous knowledge of stories they were told as kids to keep them safe, maybe segueing into the myth of Orpheus and comparing the two. Actually you could take the lens of more common understanding of myth structure and look at the ways this story differs–the girl doesn’t become more focused or better at hide and seek by the end of the story, she isn’t permanently punished for disobeying her parents, and most uniquely she saves herself entirely on her own! She figured out the Ijiraq didn’t like being stared at, and she found her way back to the village by following the inuksugaq without being told what it was for.

Overall I think this book holds up very well, and would be a good companion to a number of Lit classes. I’m excited by the prospect of using this unique tool in future years of teaching.

Berry Magic

The book that I read was Berry Magic, by Teri Sloat and Betty Huffmon. I found the book to be particularity interesting because it was about how berries came to the tundra. The book began with the main character discussing how there were these woman who would pick black crowberries, and would complain about the dry bitter taste of the berries. This however, would cause our main character to have an idea and make four unique dolls, each made out of different fabric and fur. The girl then took the dolls and went into the tundra, where she would sing a song and dance and this, would cause the dolls to come to life. When the dolls came to life they would spread berries around the area. Each doll, was representative of a different berry. The berries were then picked by everyone and loved and adored because of their sweet and delicious flavor. The berries discussed were raspberries, blueberries, salmon berries, and cranberries. This book was intriguing to me because it told a story of how an area (the tundra) became so plentiful with berries.

I would use this book in an english class pretty easily be having it show a way of thinking that one culture has used through story, to explain why their are different types of berries in the Tundra. This is something that I would use because every culture has a story explaining something, such as why the sun and moon alternate, where water comes from, where the plants and trees are from, etc. Each culture has one of these stories, and so this could be used to express another cultures view point, as well as show that this story telling explaining style is not at all unique to just one culture. Overall there are many different uses for this book, and that is what makes it so unique and incredible to read. This book was also written by a local native american member of the tribe and so that makes it unique because it is a first hand account of a story that has been passed down through generations. Betty is a Yup’ik Eskimo elder, and so her insight makes the story that much more amazing. It really puts a unique perspective on the matter.

Learning from Picture Books

Orca’s Song

Response

I read Orca’s Song by Anne Cameron. Finding literature – especially picture books – to read in a music classroom is difficult. They can be hard to tie into the lesson material, especially in a strings focused class (like I am used to teaching). Yet there are really valuable stories to read in class as a music educator, because one of the biggest challenges with a music class is working together in a creative space. Students can often be more vulnerable or uncertain when they have the freedom to move around and express themselves with something abstract like music.

I like Orca’s Song as a book to help in the musical classroom – one, because I felt it could tie into a musical lesson, and two because it had some important themes that could build the sense of teamwork, community, and working together I strive for in my classroom.

Orca’s Song is about an Orca who becomes fascinated with an Osprey. The osprey in turn, becomes fascinated with the orca. The two try harder and harder to be close to each other. Eventually, the orca brings the osprey a fish and its true love. The osprey teaches the orca to sing, and the orca teaches the osprey to fish. They fall in love and have a baby. Their orca can jump higher than any other fish in the sea, almost as if it could fly.

Rubric and Multicultural Value

Cameron was born in British Columbia, but from what I can tell is not a Native writer. I feel her work portrays native values well, and it appears from her background and other works she aspires to be sensitive and accurate to the culture’s values and stories. I would give it a lot of 3s – it seems pretty solid to me!

Using it in the Classroom

This story works well for a class that needs help building its team – the orca and the osprey clearly come from totally different ways of life, but by meeting in the middle the come to truly care about each other, and both end up the better. By overcoming their differences, they learn from each other and live more exciting lives.

In addition to the valuable moral lesson, the text is also extremely rich with musical writing. This book could be mapped out by a class into a visual score, or sentences of what happened in the story – and then performed by the students as a sonic story. They could make the sounds of the orca, the osprey, and figure out how those sounds change after the two animals teach each other.

For elementary level students, it could easily be a movement and improvisation game where they assign sounds to each part of the story. High schoolers and middle schoolers could get deeper into the idea of picking the right sounds and developing a musical structure to help tell the story.

Cameron, Anne. Orca’s Song. Madeira Park, B.C. Harbour Publishing. 1987