Teaching Your Kids About Diversity

AyaKhalil | November 18, 2011 | Comments (8)

 

Diversity is a beautiful benefit places like America has to offer. Getting exposed to  and associating with people of different cultures, backgrounds, and religions allows for a person to really experience the world.

Like Parent, Like Child

It’s never too early to teach your kids about diversity, being different, and standing out. I have been working with kids for a couple of years, and I have learned that kids are a reflection of their parents. If a child’s parent is — let’s say — not concerned with diversity and prefers living in a bubble — then the child will  pick up on that attitude. Here are some tips and ideas to incorporate diversity in your classrooms and home.

 Incorporating Diversity at Home and in the Classroom

1. Name Examples- When making a test or using an example in class or with your child, it’s better to use a variety of names. Don’t just continue to use the names “John and Sally.” Rather  also use “Jose, Yang, Ahmed, Evalina, etc. That way when the child actually meets a “Jose” then he will think, “Oh yeah, I have heard your name before; it doesn’t sound unfamiliar.” And plus, if you do have a Jose in your class, he will feel more welcomed.
2. Holidays- I recommend that Muslim parents  talk to their teachers when Eid or Ramadan are coming up. Suggest activities for the teacher to do in the class so your child feels that his holiday is valued as well; whether it’s coloring a sheep for Eid Al-Adha or making fanoos (lanterns). 
3. Special Needs- It upsets me when children poke fun of children with special needs. Sit down and talk to your children about how God created everyone differently and some children need more special attention than others. Laughing at and making fun of others is never okay.
4. Activities- Do fun activities that highlight diversity. Make a poster board with all the children’s hand prints, and have them write one thing that is different about them. Make a “diversity” board and put photos of different children on them and write “America is diverse” or something similar. The point is to let them know that Americans come from different backgrounds, cultures, and religions. I recently made cupcakes with faces on them but I made sure the faces were  diverse. Such activities truly make a difference.
5. Languages- I remember when I was in 3rd grade my teacher knew that I was Egyptian-American and asked my mother and I if we can write all my classmates’ names in Arabic on a sheet of paper. I was so excited and sounded out all the names and translated them into English. The next day I gave the names to my teacher, and the teacher cut each person’s name out and gave it to that person. Everyone then copied the beautiful Arabic letters onto construction paper, and the teacher hung them all up on a wall and it looked like a beautiful quilt. If you are a teacher, maybe you could do something similar. If you are a parent, don’t be afraid to suggest ideas like that to the teacher.
6. Be open- Talk to your child or class about being different. Tell them it’s totally fine to be different and that America is like a salad (not a melting pot as it once was because melting pot implies that we all melt into one and lose our special qualities). We have the lettuce, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and mushrooms. We have the salad dressing that goes all over us that connects us in one way or another but we are all still different and happy (and delicious).

This article was first published at www.americanmuslimmom.com 

Five Fun Tips to Teach Kids Arabic

AyaKhalil | December 12, 2011 | Comments (10)

 

I have been teaching Arabic at my local mosque’s Sunday school for a couple of months, and it has been a rewarding experience thus far. I am teaching 17 kindergarteners the Arabic alphabet  and vocabulary. It has been pretty challenging to find useful resources online to teach Arabic to little kids so I have been coming up with my own ideas for lesson plans and activities. Here are some tips to make teaching Arabic fun and enjoyable for kids:

 5 Fun Tips to Teach Kids Arabic

1. Visuals- Make posters and hang them up around your classroom with the Arabic letters and examples of words that begin with those letters. Print out coloring sheets of an animal or a fruit that begin with the letter you are teaching that day and have the kids color them.
2. Movement- Kids don’t like to sit down for a long period of time. So standing up and teaching the kids the letter “alef” and having them repeat  the word “arnab” (bunny) after you 100 hundred times might be slightly boring. Try doing “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” in an Arabic version like in this video. Or try playing “Duck, Duck, Goose,” but with two different animal words in Arabic; they absolutely love this game!
3. Singing- Kids love to sing. Singing actually helps kids recall different words. I found some neat Arabic alphabet songs (or nasheed) on YouTube, like this. Play it a couple of times at the beginning of class and have the kids repeat it. They can use this at the end-of-school event or Eid party, too!
4. Creativity- Be creative and think outside the box. You know how kids love to play “Pin the Tail on the Donkey”? I had my students play “Pin the Tail on the Wolf” a couple of weeks ago, and they loved it! We were on the letter “thal” (equivalent to “th”) and tail and wolf both start with that letter in Arabic. Each child had to say those two words before getting blindfolded to pin the tail.
5. Have fun- Kids don’t want to come to Sunday school and sit down for three hours straight to listen to lectures. They already go to school five days a week and have all sorts of homework to do. One must be careful to not make the kids hate coming to Sunday school and hate learning Arabic. Make your lessons fun. Find good English lesson plans and try to modify that to an Arabic lesson plan.

This article was first published at www.americanmuslimmom.com 

Sweet life: Butterflies, strawberries, elephants

Good evening! Today I introduced the letter

ف   "f"

There are so many fun words that begin with this letter! 
Farawala (strawberry):  فراولة 
 Feel (elephant): فيل
 Farasha (butterfly): فراشة
 Fondoq (hotel)
Farkha (chicken, but this is not colloquial  Arabic, rather the dialect version of "dajaj")
 etc. 
Many of the kids I teach Arabic is their second language so introducing several words a day is pointless and it is difficult for them to remember. I usually aim to introduce about 2-3 words per Sunday. If this were an everyday school, I would only introduce one word per day. Remember, repetition is key. Repeat the letter and words several times and have the students repeat the words several times (3-5 times). I also have my students write down the new letter on project of the day. 

Today I introduced three new words: farawla, feel and farasha. However, farasha (butterfly) was the main activity.I wanted to bring in fresh strawberries for the kids to eat -- but it was a crazy week. So I had they make little strawberries with puff balls (see below). I drew a photo of an elephant on the board and also showed our class puppet -- an elephant! He is now referred to as Mr. Feel instead of Mr. Elephant (Mr. elephant usually helps out with morning exercises). 

One student told me today after we completed the projects: you are the best teacher ever because you make us do fun things when we learn them! Totally made my day. Hands- on activities, sunday school teachers, is SO important for little kids.

So here are our pretty butterflies. 

Supplies:

popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, stickers, glue, scissors,  markers googly eyes ,  tissue paper & puff balls (for the strawberry)

My masterpiece

And the students' awesome work:

Oh look! The Farasha is eating a Farawla! Notice the elephant (feel) in the back that I drew- no ears (Hi Amirah & Tony)!

That one cool student who  decided to put the eye on the wings

The other awesome student who made a cyclops butterfly

Have a beautifulfly day!

What other fun letters begin with the letter Fah? 

Rudolph the Red Nosed Ghazala?

It has been a very very very long week with midterms, papers and a hectic work week. I am not on Spring Break! Yay! I just want to thank Amirah and Miran on Twitter for helping me last night to brainstorm ideas for today's lesson plans! Follow them, they're awesome! When students are learning a second or third language, throwing many vocabulary words at them is useless. One new word per day is practical and also reviewing the words you have taken the days before. But since Sunday Schools taken place only once a week, I try to do 1-3 words but focus on one word. Today the students learned the word: Ghamad (close; i.e., close your eyes), Ghaba (forest), and Ghazala (Gazelle, or for simplicity sake, deer).

So I had the students "ghammad" their "Ein" (eyes, which we took last week) imagine they were walking in a forest (ghaba) and they see beautiful animals and come across a ghazala. And I kept going on and on until I told them to open their eyes. I then introduced the letter

غ

 (Ghein)

I had them say it a couple of times and had someone explain to me and the classroom how this letter was different from the letter we took last week (Ein) because of the dot. I passed out paper lunch bags and they all wrote the letter ghein several times. They think of it as a backwards 3 with a dot on the top (hey whatever works, right?).

And this was the activity:

Supplies: (plus popsicle sticks and contraction paper)

This is how mine turned out:

My ghazala got hungry last night and started eating the supplies. :(

The kids' masterpiece:

It was a long day.Let's just say I'm glad the week is over and so it today. What are other words that start with the letter "ghein" that children might enjoy learning about?

Chilling at the Desert with ص

A couple of weeks ago I introduced my students to the letter ص "sa-ud" Brainstorming always takes the longest part in my lesson plan. Here are the words I came up with (and I always brainstorm with my twitter friends and husband so thank you to them!):

صبار "so-bbar" Cactus

صحراء "sah-ra" Desert

صخرة "sa-khra" Rock

I first drew a cactus and rocks on the white board (no we do not have a smart board). THey all knew what the cactus and rocks were in English. I then ask if anyone has visited a desert before and we talked about that for a little bit. Then I introduced the letter and wrote it on the board. I had them pronounce it a couple of times and write it. Then for the fun part of the lesson plan: the activity!

These were the supplies used:

popsicle sticks

play dough (yellow and green or any other if you want to be creative)

pipe cleaners

small decorative rocks (I got them from the dollar store)

cups

And here is what the class and I came up with!

This is was very fun activity. I called the students to come up and take their supplies and choose their cacti color. Then I asked them what they were as I handed to them. If they didn't know it, I would say it and they repeated after me those three words.

Do you use play dough in your classroom? What activities have you done before for this letter?

Letter ر "R" and TPR

Good morning!

A couple of months ago I introduced the letter ر or "R" to my kindergarten students. I was talking to a colleague of mine who is currently doing her PhD. in Education about TPR (Total Physical Response) and she suggested I use in this teaching method lesson.

Let me tell you something. I have taught elementary school children before (2nd-5th graders) and adults (ESL college students), so teaching such a young age was quite a different path. You can't just have these kids sit for an hour and lecture them. That's a big NO NO that I often hear of happening in some Arabic school.

So, since our letter was ر "R" I realized that several body parts began with that letter: ras (head) rokba (knee) Remsh (eyelash) and rejl (leg). Instead of just showing a photo of those body parts, I thought why not sing and come up with our own version of "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." This is what I found on YouTube:

And this ...

Our version, consisted singing: Ras, rems, rokba, rejl, rokba rejl. And repeat. And repeat again. And again. And again. The kids loved this and although there are four new vocabulary words introduced here, many still remember them until this day because they sang it and involved their whole body. In fact, since yesterday we were on the letter "Ein," I had the students do this dance/song again and add the Ein (eye) to the song.

For assessment, I had the students draw a picture of them and circle the words we learned. If they were a little older I would have had them write down what body parts they are, but they are still learning to write in both English and Arabic.

Have you tried TPR before? Do your kids love to sing and dance when learning a new word/lesson?

ع for عنكبوت "Ein" for "Ankaboot"

For our Arabic lesson today I introduced my students to the letter ع.

I usually start out my Arabic lesson plans with questions and advanced organizers . Today I asked my students if they liked spiders. Then they shared what spiders they like, how they dislike spiders and I drew a couple of pictures of spiders. This type of advanced organizer really helps the students think about what's coming next and exercise their brains a little before being introduced to the new letter and word.

After writing the letter ع on the board and having them say it a couple of times we move to the fun activity! عنكبوت is spider in Arabic. I stayed up last night pulling apart egg cartons and painting them:

I encourage critical thinking and thinking outside the box. So I told my students to use their imaginations with the spiders. I was so surprised what they came up with!



This is what I did and showed them:

Our supplies were toothpicks, pipe cleaners, glitter glue, ribbons and the egg cartons. This is what the students came up with:

They loved this activity! I then asked them as they were working on the project what they were making (had them say it in Arabic-- as assessment) and had another spider conversation. Some kids came up with stories about how their spiders were crying because they were going to get squished. Others made their spiders simple and to the point!