Making Multicultural Connections
Through Trade Books
Welcome
Welcome to The Program of Assessment, Diagnosis and Instruction (PADI) and its data base focused on multicultural tradebooks for elementary aged children. These books were selected because they represent a specific culture and its traditions, history, folktales, or current peoples. Some have lovely illustrations and others convey the culture through the sounds of the words, names and specific events depicted. Most of the books are written and/or illustrated by members of the particular culture being shared. The books often deal with themes that underscore the universality of human experience. The books bring children into a natural, non-threatening, experience of other people that cannot help but broaden and enrich their perspectives of the world. Students from specific cultures also benefit from seeing themselves, their families and their heritage reflected in these books.
Format
A tradebook is included here if the developers can identify a specific instructional connection between the book and the Montgomery County Public Schools curriculum in reading/language arts, math, social studies, or science. In some instances a specific lesson is also provided to illustrate this model of using a tradebook as a link to an extended learning experience in a specific content area. For example the book, Dumpling Soup by Lillian Hsu-Flanders, has two illustrative lessons; one is linked to the "Families" unit in kindergarten social studies, the other to "Problem-solving" in math at grades one and two. In addition to the suggested curriculum connections, bibliographical information and a very brief synopsis is also providedfor each book.
The database information can be accessed by:
Technology Link
Montgomery County Public Schools is pursuing a comprehensive plan supporting technology and global access for every school. In response to that emphasis, recommended software has been listed here to provide a technology link to the tradebook or the learning experience surrounding it. For example both Chicken Sunday by Pat Polacco, and Nina's Treasures by Stefan Czernecki and Timothy Rhodes, feature pysansky eggs. The software tool, Kid Pix Studio allows students to create their own pysansky eggs, an activity made much more meaningful once students have been exposed to one of the books. In the same way that multicultural content is strengthened by its natural connection to authentic instructional topics, children's technology experiences are richer when they are linked to an instructional purpose rather than being limited to an isolated exploration of the technology .
Rationale
Development of this database follows six years of staff development in multicultural education in PADI, a special program designed to find and foster potential giftedness among students often overlooked for selection as gifted and talented. The students especially targeted for this program include African American, Hispanic, limited English proficient, economically disadvantaged, and underachieving youngsters.
PADI has tried through various staff development activities to help PADI teachers more naturally infuse multicultural content into on-going instruction, particularly in the areas of science, social studies and math. PADI wants to move away from the tokenism of a Black History Month to the more natural inclusion of information about African American heritage and significant African American contributions at the specific points in the curriculum where this information naturally fits. Such information can be trivialized when it is treated as isolated or disembodied information disconnected from the learning it is logically associated with. The ultimate goal is to reflect those aspects of a culture that will naturally lead students to awareness, then acceptance, appreciation, and respect, not to actually "teach" the culture.
Teachers directly identify the following barriers to infusing more multicultural content into their day to day instruction:
These are legitimate concerns with no fast, ready-made solutions. The multicultural data-base shared here is being developed as a way around these barriers. Elementary teachers universally enjoy read-a-loud with their students and more and more research supports the positive affects of this practice on student reading achievement. These books will subtly bring children into gentle and respectful contact with other cultures through their natural enjoyment of being read to. Following or surrounding this read-a-loud activity, students participate in a learning experience that is linked to on-going classroom learning suggested by a specific content connection. A technology extension to enrich the learning sequence is suggested as well. This extends the childrens' positive experience with the book, and hence the culture, and embeds these experiences in meaningful classroom learning.
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Last updated on Sept. 18, 1997
Maintained by John L. Day