Teaching Personal Narratives & Descriptive Lang with Cultural Diversity

I was able to teach my 2^nd grade students about personal narratives while also connecting with their cultural backgrounds. I showed the students a slide show of pictures from my trip at Mt. Takao – a famous mountain in the Tokyo region – as I read my personal narrative about my climb up the mountain. I wanted my personal narrative to focus on a small moment I have had here in Japan so that my students could connect with my experience. About half of the students in the class are Japanese students, while the remaining are half Japanese/ White, half Japanese/ half African, and White. The topic of Mt. Takao connected with the students’ cultural backgrounds because students could see pictures of the mountain’s beautiful landscape and religious shrines that are part of Japan’s narrative. Japanese students were able to see their own cultural practices, while the international students were able to learn about them. 

As I showed students the slideshow of pictures, I read them my personal narrative. One of my objectives for the lesson was for students to demonstrate understanding that a personal narrative is an entertaining experience that happened in the past, consisting of different events. Students were able to directly visualize the events in my narrative – the start of my climb, the shrines, the statues, and finally the view at the top. Another objective of my lesson was for students to identify “showing” vs. “telling” language in my narrative. I wrote sentences such as “the sun’s rays made the trail even glow,” and “My legs were suddenly able to switch from walking to running!” Students were able to recognize that in the former sentence, instead of simply writing “the weather was nice,” I showed that the weather was nice by describing what the sun made the mountain look like. In the latter sentence, identified that I was showing my new energy for climbing the mountain, without just saying “I had more energy.”

One of my favorite examples of showing language was that “Statues of different deities stared directly at me.” When I read students this, I showed them a picture of the statues. Some students smiled because they recognized the cultural significance of the statues, while some asked questions regarding what a deity is. I asked students, “Can statues really stare at you?” I told students that I wrote the statues stared at me in order to show how I believed that they were somehow telling me to persevere up the mountain. Students were able to grasp that descriptive language is about showing one’s feelings and even breaking away from reality. After the lesson, students started writing their own personal narratives with descriptive language. I was pleased that one student wrote that he “felt like a fish” and “was in a blue world.” I could tell that the student was describing how he felt in water with making comparisons and describing the scene outside just telling his reader that he was in water. The students overall achieved the objectives of my lesson and were excited to write their own personal narratives. I’m excited to see what they’ll have accomplished at my next visit!