Liz Bigler is introducing a lesson to her fourth-graders on Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. She wants her beginning learners to understand the meaning of the word fair that is key to understanding the motivation for the boycott. She takes a bag of pennies and gives them out to a group of students. Three students get 10 pennies. The fourth gets 1. The children look puzzled,and Liz explains to them (with repetition,rephrasing,and gestures) that this is an example of something that is "not fair." The students then proceed with their total physical response (TPR) lesson,which includes acting out the boycott as the teacher tells the story. (See Bigler,2006,for a complete description of this lesson.)
between learners' cultures and cultural knowledge and the new culture of the school and the community. It also may include,at beginning levels,selecting topics that learners are likely to be familiar with, providing necessary background information on new topics in home languages,preteaching key vocabulary background information on new topics in home languages,preteaching key vocabulary to expand background knowledge before studying a topic, or helping learners make connections between what they know about language in their home language(L1) to uses of this knowledge in English (L2). It also might include providing background information in L1 before proceeding to study a theme or topic in L2. In a bilingual might, for example,have learners read or listen to a home language summary of a text before they will be reading it in English.