Native Language Literacy
Native Language Literacy
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The typical classroom assumes that teaching and learning stand in a one-to-one relationship: the more I teach, the more you learn. In practice of course this assumption puts a priority on teaching and hopes that learning will occur in the process. The Silent Way knows that learning will occur and so subordinates teaching to it. Here you can try a preliminary site that demonstrates how subordinating teaching to learning works. You can use this site to start pronouncing and reading an American Indian language. You can also use the site to learn how early reading programs contain a design bias. Design bias is at work when early reading exercises work for children from homes with higher levels of preliteracy but don't work well for children who come to school with lower levels of preliteracy awareness. Give the lessons a try if you are interested in the beginning steps to learning another language. If you are interested in helping very young children learn to read English...or any other language...you can begin with Introduction to Design Bias in Early Literacy Activities. (The Design Bias site will return you to this page after the introduction.) Otherwise check below to begin speaking without a teacher--or a typical classroom--to pressure you. |
Directions for beginning to speak or read Lakota/Dakota:
1a) When you click on the following link, you will see a Sound-Color Chart like the one above, only larger. As you click on one of the colored rectangles, you will hear a sound. Make the sound yourself...aloud. Begin with the top sounds, moving left to right, a few at a time. Then click "Back" to return to this page: Sound-Color Exercise
*Note: The sound you hear when you click on the colored rectangles below the dividing line will be a combination of that particular sound and the sound given with the top white rectangle.
1b) After practicing a few sounds in 1a, move on to the game in Lesson 2 below. Alternate back and forth until you (and your throat) are comfortable with all the sounds in the language.
**We highly recommend that you don't use a paper and pencil to make notes or to associate the sounds with a written alphabet in the early lessons. Just play the games--they prepare you for beginning to speak the language.
Lakota/Dakota Sound Games: Lesson 2
Hearing Lakota/Dakota Words: Lesson 3
Lakota/Dakota Alphabet: Lesson 4
Spelling Lakota/Dakota Words: Lesson 5
Reading Lakota/Dakota: Lesson 6
Notes on the Language Learning approach used here (The Silent Way)
How the revitalized Maori language is taught using this approach
More information on Words in Color for Teaching Reading
Text by Jim Green
Box 340
Wilmot, SD 57279
Send EMAIL to: jim@dailypost.com