Class 5 (Oct 2) Entrance Slip - Learning the Grammar of Animacy

I was amazed by how beautifully written this reading was. I was reminded of the second sit spots activity we did when I was reading the part about “[turning] off the voice in my head until I can hear the voices outside it. I thought of how many random thoughts I had in my head during the activity in the beginning, and after I was aware of them, and put them aside, I was able to hear so much more that was around me. 

Teaching scientific terminology in the classroom, I really liked how the author talks about “to name and describe [a concept] you must first see”. I believe that learning physics can be a lot more fun and relatable if students are introduced to the knowledge by knowing what the concept looks like, before knowing what the concept is called. Just like when Jim Thunder in the reading started by telling a joke in Potawatomi, making the author wonder what he was talking about because they couldn’t understand the language, then spoke about “how lonely those [languages] will be, when their power is gone”, when no one could understand them anymore. By introducing the terminology associated with the concept after allowing students to observe the concept taking place, students can feel the concepts themselves before assigning them to a specific name, which can make the terminology more meaningful and personal. The author also wrote in the language they were learning on sticky notes. This way, the author puts themselves in an environment surrounded by the language, which can improve their mastery of the language. Similarly, in physics classrooms, like what we learned in the physics pedagogy class, having a vocabulary list on the wall for students to see all the time, and incorporating the terminology in discussions, can help students learn and get used to the terminology, which I feel is also a good way to teach scientific terminology in the classroom. 

One of the ways to Indigenize my own classroom and curriculum that I thought of when reading the chapter was to remind students to be aware of their surroundings, and respect all animate and inanimate things, just as they would treat other human beings, just like how the article said, “teaching them to know the world as a neighborhood of nonhuman residents”. This can include introducing examples of how physics takes place in nature, what the roles of physics in the life of other animals are, so that students can be invited to learn from other living beings. Moreover, encouraging students to learn from their peers, reminding them of “the capacity of others as our teachers, as holders of knowledge, as guides”. By inviting students to learn from different perspectives, reminding them that “there are intelligences other than our own, teachers all around us”, students can develop their abilities to interpret and learn from both the environment and their peers.