Final Project

Multiliterate Al School

Dutch

Swahili Arabic

French

Spanish

One School

Introducing Us

•  Hi! First off. we would like to introduce ourselves. Our names are Stephanie Tyler and Christian Waite. We are both Seniors in the Teacher Education Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingam. We were asked to create a multiliteracy website with a twist for one of our classes.

• We believe fostering multiliteracy is where our National Education system should be focused. While we believe it is important for student's to learn the English language, we do not want them to lose their native language. We feel strongly that these native languages are a resource that should be valued to the highest extent.

Format - Framework

We followed the guidelines laid out in Taylor, Dorsey-Gaines.

There are nine types of reading.

1. Instrumental Reading

2. News Related Reading

3. Confirmational Reading

4. Social Interactional Reading

5. Recreational Reading

6. Critical/ Educational

7. Financial Reading

8. Socio-historical Reading

9. Environmental Reading

Most of our reading was Instrumental Reading. This is reading to gain information for meeting practical needs and scheduling daily life.

Introducing UsUs in the YMCA

playroom on Halloween.

Stephanie

Christian

Our Multiliterate Journey

• WHY?Why? Why a project like this? Why make a website for multiple languages? It is quite simple really. We wanted to create a place where teachers could come and have additional resources available to them that could help cater to their bilingual and perhaps multilingual students.

• How? The Beginning     We felt that in creating our site, it would be best to focus on one central location. Since

our location is central Alabama, we chose one inner city school in our area as the focus.

• How? The Next StepThe next step in our process was to research our school. This is something that can be done anywhere, for anyone who chooses to do a project like ours. We felt it was important to start at the top. For this reason, we scheduled a meeting with our school's principal. After a brief meeting he sent us to speak with the ESL department. Our experience in the ESL department was eye opening and enlightening. We discovered four major languages in our small elementary school. In addition to the four major languages, there were others that were spoken by previous students. These included Arabic, Uwe, and other languages originating in Africa. For this reason, these are not included in this website with the exception of Arabic because this school is expecting the arrival of students with this as their native language.

Our Multiliterate Journey• The Real Journey Begins...• Now that we had done our homework, it was time to venture out into the community.

There we planned to photograph these languages being implemented. There were many things we expected, but also many surprises. The first place we discovered was an organization called HICA. To find out more about this organization please visit the Spanish portion of this website.

• After discovering HICA, we continued our search for Spanish in the general community. In the community around this area there are a majority of Spanish signs and places of business. If you visit our Spanish link, you can see some of these photos.

• The Journey Continues…– After leaving this area, we proceeded into another suburb of the city. In this area

we found the Muslim community center. At the time we arrived, they were closed for the day. There was also an Islamic school located here as well. This is where we took a few of our Arabic print pictures.

– Then we visited Tria Market. This is where you can purchase global items. Here we found a variety of print from different languages.

– The third stop was Nabeels. This is another global market in the area. – Both of these also have attached restaurants. – To see which types of print we found in these stores, proceed to the different

languages links.

Our Multiliterate Journey• Our Final Stops

– The final two stops on our list were Walmart Neighborhood Market and Books-A-Million. If you look in your grocery store, you can sometimes find sections of the store dedicated to other cultural foods. This is the section we found.

– We then made our final stop at Books-A-Million. We, being here on previous occasions we had seen a Swahili alphabet book, which we wanted to include in our pictures. This was because we did not find any other pictures or resources for these students and parents in our area. Regretfully, they did not have the book in stock.

• The Journey Ends– We finally had all the pictures that we needed. We gathered all our information

and proceeded to place everything on the website. – There were a few more steps in the process that must be listed...

• We compiled all the photos• Researched information on the languages• Researched services for each language in our area

Spanish - Español• Spanish speaking students are increasing in

Alabama classrooms daily. This is evident when visiting most classrooms in Birmingham. When looking through records of the US Census Bureau, it is estimated that Hispanics make up only 2% of Birmingham and the surrounding areas population. However, we do not feel as though these numbers correctly reflect the Hispanic population for a variety of reasons.  There are many resources available for teachers of Spanish speaking students. There are also community resources available for these students and their parents. One provider of these resources is !HICA! This is "The Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama. As stated in their brochure it is "a non-profit organization whose mission is to improve the lives of Latinos in Alabama through coordination with community resources, transitional services, education and advocacy. When visiting them throughout our research, we found them to be very helpful. 

Sign inside of HICA

Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama

Sign in Homewood

Spanish - Español

• Fast Facts– Between 322 and 400 million people

speak Spanish as their native language

– It is considered the second to third most spoken native language

– The only two languages more widely spoken are English and Chinese

– 44.3 million people are of Hispanic/Latino decent in the U.S.

– About 34 million people speak the

language at home

Spanish on the back of a compact disc case.

Directions for a digital recorder.

Spanish - Español

Spanish - Español

French - Français• French speaking students are not as prevalent in

Alabama schools. However, in the particular school that we focused on, there are a few of these students. One of the main reasons that we chose to include the French language in our study is due to a situation in one of the families at our school. These students came into the school not speaking English. Their native language was French. As they have progressed, they have almost completely lost their native language. One comment made was that even when spoken to in French, the students will answer in English. We, as future teachers, find this extremely discouraging. This is because we believe bilingual and multilingual students are a crucial resource for our classroom and our society.

• All photos on this page

items found at Tria Market

French - Français

• 128 million people world-wide consider French their first or second language.

• It is the official language in 29 countries.

• Many of these countries are in Africa. (This is important to note because our particular students are from Africa)

• French is currently the fourth most spoken language in the country. When Chinese languages are grouped together.

• All photos on this page

items found at Tria Market

French - Français

Both of these items were found in the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Homewood. (Palisades)

Arabic - بّي�ة اْل�َع�َر�FAST FACTS

• Classified as a Macro-language that has 27 sub-languages• Native speakers of this language number from 186-422 million speakers• The official language of 25 countries• There are 1.6 million people of Arab descent in the U.S. as of 2000

Our school did not have any Arabic students at the time that we did our research. However, we did include this language because they were expecting these students.

Dutch - Nederlands• There was only one student in our

school that spoke Dutch. • We were very disappointed to not find

many resources in our area.• There are however a variety of internet

sources.

FAST FACTS• Spoken by 22 million people as a

native language• Official language in eight countries• According to 200 census 150,396

people spoke Dutch at home.

Dutch writing on the back of a box of cookies.

A Few Online Tools

Named after a the city of Gouda in the Netherlands, Dutch word.

Swahili - Kiswahili• Only 5-10 million people consider this their

native language. But in Tanzania alone it is spoken by 90

percent of the 39 million people It is the official language in only four

countries Where you have seen Swahili

o “ Kovu” scars adopted son in the Lion King means scar

o “Rafiki” means friend

We did not find any pictures of Swahili in our environment. However, here are some online pictures.

Courtesy of http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/images/sagan03.jpg

Courtesy of http://www.gracenotescards.com/image

s/sala-ndogo-ndogo.jpg

Courtesy of http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/languagelist2/Swahili/$file/Swahili.gif

Youtube Links• Here is a link that we thought you could share with all students. It is the theme song

to Duck Tales in many different languages including English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-zmEINVkgY • Here are links to national anthems of each of our student’s native countries.• France’s National Anthem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K1q9Ntcr5g&feature=PlayList&p=136188241AC2B753&index=0

• Mexico’s National Anthem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck5fjxHoubg&feature=PlayList&p=EAEC5DF2C4CE6E9B&index=0

• Egypt’s National Anthem (Arabic)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=911KGDM_tgA

• Poland’s National Anthem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DebhiaQH3ps&feature=related• Kenya’s National Anthem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVXkNUZ1Hes

Tips For Teachers• If you read the Slide titled “Our Multiliteracy Journey” you can follow the same

process.• Be open to all cultures.• Be ready for surprises.• Make use of any and all available resources. For example, HICA was a great

resource for our project.• Always make an effort to make each and every student comfortable in your

classroom. Even if this means only learning how to say hello in their native language. While you may think this is time consuming it is not. Youtube is a great resource for this.