CO-LINGUAL SONG GAME DEVELOPMENT PROJECT · PDF fileCO-LINGUAL SONG GAME DEVELOPMENT PROJECT MARPOLE OAKRIDGE FAMILY PLACE & LIVING LANGUAGE INSTITUTE FOUNDATION JULY 2008 Final Report

CO-LINGUAL SONG GAME DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

MARPOLE OAKRIDGE FAMILY PLACE & LIVING LANGUAGE INSTITUTE FOUNDATION

JULY 2008

Final Report to the United Way : Community Innovations

The More We Get Together, the Happier We’l l Be

L i v i n g L a n g u a g e I n s t i t u t e F o u n d a t i o n 9 8 3 B u t e S t . Va n c o u v e r, B . C . V 6 E 1 Y 7 6 0 4 - 2 9 4 - 9 8 9 5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 3

Assessing the Project Experience 7

The Sound to Symbol Methodology 11

Commentary by Researchers 14

Sharing the Experience 27

Conclusion 28

Appendices 29

The More We Get Together , the Happier We’l l Be

1 2 3 4 M a i n S t r e e t , A n y t o w n , S t a t e 5 4 3 2 1 • t e l e p h o n e : 1 2 3 . 4 5 6 . 7 8 9 0 • f a x : 1 2 3 . 4 5 6 . 7 8 9 1 • w w w. a p p l e . c o m / i w o r k

Introduction

Specific Context of the ProjectThe Song Game Development pilot project, in partnership with the Living Language Foundation and the United Way, was developed through Marpole Oakridge Family Place with the intent to help families in the Marpole area to learn skills they need to support their children’s language development.

Many of the families that use Marpole Oakridge Family Place are very concerned about their children’s English language readiness to enter the Vancouver schools. Studies in the last 30 years have also found that if children speak their first language well, they will also learn to speak English better, or any another second language (Cummins 1984; Skutnabb-Kangas 1981; Wong-Fillmore, L., 19911).

The Living Language Institute’s interest in developing co-lingual song games had the potential to address both of these concerns, and we agreed to work together on a pilot project that would be mutually beneficial for both organizations.

The Living Language Institute Foundation is a not-for-profit charitable organization registered in 1987 in British Colum-bia, Canada. The purpose of Living Language Institute Foundation is to develop an appreciation of Canada with special focus on the inherent richness of the many and varied languages, cultures, stories and song of its citizens --- the ‘folk’ of Canada. Living Language Institute Foundation is committed to the support of children and parents learning through singing and song games - well researched learning methodologies that support our common humanity and our love of learning together.

Jill Fitzell, as Executive Director of Marpole Oakridge Family Place (MOFP), focused the project on community develop-ment:

Community Development is the process of developing active and sustainable communities based on social justice and mutual respect. It is about influencing power structures to remove the barriers that prevent people from participating in the issues that affect their lives.

Community workers facilitate the participation of people in this process. They enable connections to be made between communities and with the development of wider policies and programmes.

Educating, enabling and empowering are at the core of Community Development

Strategic Framework for Community Development, Standing Conference for Community Development, 2001.

M a r p o l e O a k r i d g e F a m i l y P l a c e

L i v i n g L a n g u a g e I n s t i t u t e F o u n d a t i o n C o - l i n g u a l S o n g G a m e D e v e l o p m e n t P r o j e c t

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1 Cummins, J. Bilingualism and Minority-Language Children. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in education, 1981; Skutnabb-Kangas, T. Bilingualism or Not: The education of Minorities. Multilingual Matters Ltd., Avon, England: Clevedon, 1981; Wong-Fillmore, L. When Learning a Second Language Means Losing the First. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 6: 1991: 323-46.

General Context of the Project

Many parents of young children in the Vancouver area do not speak English as a primary language. Many come from other countries where the importance of interactive play for language development may not be emphasized since chil-dren are naturally part of a community or family group. Parents may also be more focused on their children's academic learning and may not fully appreciate the necessary developmental milestones that children achieve through interactive play and exploration. We know from educators that children are coming to school with significant delays in language even in their own mother tongue. We also know that the physical and sensory motor aspects of child development that contribute to a child's learning capacity are also being observed as delayed in children coming into kindergarten. The Co-Lingual Song Game Development Project was con-ceived and developed by the Marpole Oakridge Family Centre and the Living Language Institute Foundation to address these concerns. This project focused on the co-lingual aspect of child development. The children in-volved are developing in a multi-lingual environment that is becoming the norm in Vancouver. Parents are concerned that their children learn English in order to do well in school. However, we know that the mother tongue shapes how children develop comprehension and we wanted to provide a program that supports co-lingual language de-velopment and not only ESL.

Goals of the Project

This project set out to reach immigrant families and to build community through co-lingual song games that acknowl-edge, in addition to English, their native languages as contribution to the rich language diversity of modern day Vancou-ver.

This project intended to provide a critical 'training the trainer' component throughout the project through the use of facilitators from each of the language groups. The facilitators were drawn from four language communities and became leaders and advocates for the methodology with families. The project’s goal of training facilitators in community devel-opment through the song games in different languages became a primary outcome of the project.

This project intended to provide a program of song games that engaged parents in interactive play with their children using Singing English as the template and also using song games from their own primary language group. This approach provided parents with a structure for play with their children to support children's development in their mother tongue and in English.



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This project used the underlying Sound to Symbol Methodology (developed by Dr. Fleurette Sweeney) as an impor-tant method for developing oral language skills in the context of social play and for practicing important sensory motor integration activities that arise in the context of the game play. Developing community through social play is another outcome of the Sound to Symbol approach.



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Project Plan Selection of Facilitators- January, 2008

3 full day training workshops introducing the Sound to Symbol methodology to facilitators who then workshopped 2 songs from their own language . - February and early March See DVD

Recruitment of families - March

8 once-a-week workshops where 4 English, 2 Japanese, 2 Mandarin, 2 Spanish and 2 Tagalog song games were introduced March 29 - May 31, 2008 See DVD

Video taping of all sessions for analysis and research

Facilitators spent a half hour in discussion after each of the workshops

All families interviewed for their commentary and feedback

All facilitators interviewed for their commentary and feedback

Print materials for each song developed for each language. These were illustrated by line drawings taking from actual photographs. June, July

Final Report prepared - July



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Assessing the Project Experience

Community Development: FacilitatorsThe project has served primarily as a training process for nine bilingual facilitators, who are now interested in continuing to practice the singing games with their respective language communities in the future. Nine facilitators (see appendix 1) participated in the 3 full days of training and 8 weeks of family workshops: 3 Mandarin language speakers, 3 Japanese language speakers, 2 Spanish language speakers, and 1 Tagalog language speaker. We did not receive any response to the call for Russian speakers, so we changed to Spanish.

Comments by Facilitators: Very impressed by the attitude of respect for each adult, child, and culture

Now feels able to greet people in other languages

I hope this project continues on and maybe branch out into different community ef-forts.

It was a pleasure working with such lovely and knowledgeable ladies. I really look forward to our play parties in the future.

Fleurette’s lectures and leadership were wonderful; I really enjoyed myself and learned a lot.

I would like to thank all the staff and people I met through this project. It was an un-forgettable experience!

Suggestions for the future:

It would be ideal to have a full Week 1 of training for 3 hours a day, instead of having it happen every week and have a break. Week 2 would involve visits to centres/family places to welcome parents and families to be involved in the whole process.



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Community Development: Parents and Grandparents

Ten families registered to participate in the 8 week program of Saturday morning workshops: 3 Japanese language, 4 Mandarin language, 1 Spanish language, and 2 Tagalog language speakers (see appendix 1).

Comments by Parents:All the families who responded thought that they and their child/ren very much enjoyed being introduced to 4 lan-guages commonly spoken in the Marpole community.

Suggestions for the future:

The families preferred that the workshops be organized more closely together in future, and several thought that the sessions could be longer (from 1.5-2 hours instead of 1 hour).

Giving the parents the purpose and general outline at first would help them to be more comfortable and con-centrate in class.

Most of the Mandarin families rarely sing the songs from other languages. ...if we had recorded the songs for the families in the beginning, [that might] help the parents sing and play the songs games at home with their child.

The session date need to be discussed as the family might be busy with family activities [on Saturday] so if it

can be moved to a little earlier time, perhaps

9.30 am for 45-50 minutes it might not interfere with their plans. Or perhaps a weekday may be even better.

Must think carefully about each language community and how best to meet each one’s needs. E.g. focus on song game development with children younger than 2 years for the Japanese families; keep in mind that Tagalog

speaking families usually speak English as well, so they have less incentive to come to programs with an Eng-lish focus.

Change the balance of language songs to suit the participants’ level of understanding – more in their first lan-guage, especially for families who speak very little English.

It would help parents to receive written copies of the words, so that they can practise at home.



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Community Development: ChildrenFifteen children were registered to participate in the 8 workshops: 5 Japanese language, 6 Mandarin language, 1 Spanish language, and 3 Tagalog language speakers.

Comments by Parents:Parents thought that their child often talked about the Song Game sessions at home, and that they sometimes sang songs from the sessions at home (in more than one language). Children varied in how much each had

learned some English (from “very much” to “not much”, e.g.) in the 8 weeks. They all agreed that the sessions had helped their children to develop new social skills (taking turns, listening to others’ ideas and sharing their own, taking responsibility of leadership and accepting the role of follower)

My son started preschool and thought that there was “Me and other families”. Now he understands that “

Maybe the other person speaks another language at home”.

My child learned words like up/down, turn around, walk, run, how to ask people questions.

Suggestions for the future: I feel 8 weeks is a little short. We were just starting to see some

children warm up to the group.

It might be a good idea that you target slightly younger (1 and 2 year old) children next time…, including more focus on parent-child

interaction.



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The Sound to Symbol Methodology

The use of the Sound to Symbol Methodology provided a basis for using folk song games from the mother tongue to cre-ate interactive play activities to encourage parents to play with their children every day.

Facilitators were introduced to the methodology through three all day workshops. These workshops were conducted orally and participants learned to sing and play the Singing English song games first. Then facilitators were asked to identify traditional songs from their mother tongue that could be developed into a song game or already were song games. These songs were assessed in terms of their capacity to hold the cadence and sound patterns of the mother lan-guage. The group of facilitators worked together to help each other develop two song games for each of the 4 mother languages.

The facilitators served as family liaison with each of the language groups. Eight Saturday morning workshops for chil-dren and parents were then held where four Singing English songs were learned and eight songs from the four other language groups. Materials were also developed for families to use the song games they learn in the workshop at home. These materials include a CD and small illustrated booklets.

The methodology for learning was entirely oral and consisted of singing and playing the games throughout the one-hour sessions. Each week there would be 4 Singing English songs and 2 songs from one of the mother languages. These were then repeated twice over the 8 weeks of family workshops.



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About the Sound to Symbol MethodologyThe Sound to Symbol Methodology has been developed over the past 30 years. It has grown from work in education through music and has been expanded to include application in literacy and orality. It is an important method for devel-oping oral language skills in the context of social play and for practicing important sensory motor integration activities that arise in the context of the game play.

The songs are structured for cooperative social interaction and are based on simple movements and gestures that engage attention and provide both sequencing and patterns of social interaction carried by the song’s architecture. Many of the song actions were developed based on the work of the late Dr. Jean Ayers, an occupational therapist who pioneered ac-tivities for children in sensory motor integration.

Observation as methodology is a critical aspect of the Sound-to-Symbol methodology.

“While observing children as they play folk song-games, I have seen children express physical/perceptual and social/emotional responses, I have also seen them express imaginative/cognitive and musical/language responses during play. But these separations and categories are only useful for purposes of describing. In the lived experience of children playing, perceptual, cognitive and social responses are all interconnected; one experience never acts in isolation of the other two. A child is ‘all of a piece'. After more than thirty years of observing children ‘wholly’ absorbed while playing folk song-games, I am convinced that this particular form of social play holds great potential for evoking a ‘whole child’ response from children.” 2Dr. Fleurette Sweeney

Singing English is the name given to the Sound-to Symbol methodology when it is used in working with multi-lingual groups and ESL and when it is used with children with developmental delays.

Singing English is deceptively simple. It rests on the knowledge that the music of certain songs flow in confluence with spoken English. By learning songs such as "The More we Get Together" and "Circle Left, Duo Duo", the children are given an acoustic ‘mantra’ which, when accompanied by the social play of the folk song-game, establishes an architecture of oral English and a social structure for contextualizing the meaning of the words.

Repeating the songs and games over time, while at the same time re-directing the auditory focus of the players and di-versifying the focus of the games, provides the oral language structure for children for moving from sound to symbol, both iconic and written. Singing uses a different brain function and children with language delays often find singing en-joyable.



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2 Dr. Fleurette Sweeney- Doctoral thesis

Advantages of the Singing English Program

An oral methodology The methodology is oral in both the training of teachers and the

teaching of students. In later stages of the methodology, written lan-guage is introduced. However, the main focus of the methodology is the acoustic sounds and rhythm of English.

English folk song games are used to learn the acoustic patterns and metrics, rhythms of spoken English. The games provide enjoy-able social interactions in which the meaning the words arises through the context of the actions.

Repetition of the whole song Students learn to sing the whole song from the very beginning. It is the sound and not the meaning that is impor-

tant.

The song is sung over and over during the song games, often daily over a period of months and years.

Layers of learning a living language The same song can be used to develop many layers of language learning

A small number of songs can be used to cover a wide curriculum

Non English speaking teachers can learn to teach the song games using simple English communication phrases with consistent hand patterns that convey meaning.



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Commentary by Researchers

Description of Research ApproachThe facilitator training and the family workshops were videotaped to provide a record of the experience and for further analysis of the pro-ject.

In addition, each of the professionals involved and the facilitators par-ticipated each week in a feedback session for half an hour after the workshops. Insights from these multiple observations were incorpo-rated into the next week’s activities. Many of these sessions were both videotaped and also audio recorded on a

digital recorder.

Dr. Fitzell, a trained anthropologist, observed the workshop sessions with a specific focus on family child interaction, community develop-ment and child engagement.

The language facilitators together with their specific language families participated in a structured oral interview, often in their own language with translation provided by the facilitators.

All the professionals involved also engaged in observing for learning in order to contribute their expertise to the devel-opment of the project.

Observations

The following provide observations from the professionals involved with the project:



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Dr. Fleurette Sweeney- from Sound to Symbol perspective

Singing English functioned as the ‘river bed’ governing the flow of all the streams of learning experienced by the children and parents during the co-lingual Song Game project. In saying this, however, it is not in any way to imply that the focus of the project was ‘to learn English’. Rather, Singing English was used to model a process of applying the Sound to Sym-bol Methodology3 (SSM) in experiencing communally the several neighborhood languages frequenting Oakridge Mar-pole Family Place.

In its origins SSM was developed to take advantage of the ease with which speakers of English express the musical quali-ties of oral English. To this end certain songs in which those qualities are held in tact, were used to bridge the gap be-tween orality and music literacy. Singing English is the reverse of this. In Singing English we use these same songs to move from orality to literacy in English --- “from sound to symbol”. By taking advantage of the way these songs enhance the musical qualities of oral English they serve to bridge the gap between orality and language literacy. Shared orality in all five languages of the Co-lingual Community Project was the primary goal. This is the perspective used to focus my reflections on the Co-lingual Family Project.

1. At its most basic level, oral language is engaging with sound. A primary focus of my reflection on the Project has been to address the question, “How did the participants engage in the sound of the five languages of the project?” It was apparent among both adults and children that:

At the beginning of the Project even when the song games were not familiar to them, their ‘knowing engagement’ with the sound of the songs was greater when we sang the songs in their respective mother tongues.

By the fifth session there was a remarkable change in the children’s vocal participation especially in the singing of all four of the English song games.[Undoubtedly this happened because we sang and played the same four songs at all of the eight sessions and in many we sang them more than once during the sessions.]

As for the songs of the four other languages the engagement in singing moved on a continuum from:

Not singing but simply attending to what was going on in the actions of the game;

To performing the actions of the game and tonguing4 the song more and more confidently;



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3 Sweeney, F. 2002, From Sound to Symbol: The Whole Song as Curriculum; The Whole Child as Pedagogue; Observation as Meth-odology, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The University of British Columbia.

4 This is as transitional activity commonly used when we do not know the words of a song but we do know both the tune and the syllabication. It is a basic ‘tool’ for structuring orality in either a song or language.

Doing the actions, while tonguing and singing specific words either at cadences5 where there are often rhyming or ‘sound alike’ words, or when word patterns are repeated.

[Observing this process it was evident to me that the constant repetition made it possible to develop the confidence to both sing the English songs and then gain an understanding of the sequence of the activities of the game. Each helped structure the other.]

Neither adults nor children attained more than a sense of the general flow of the actions of the games and a general ability to tongue the songs with varying degrees of accuracy. [Noticing the significant difference in the participants’ ability to sing the songs of languages other than their re-spective mother tongues simply bore out the need that all need many, many opportunities to repeat the songs and the actions of the games. The Project did not provide an adequate number of opportunities to repeat songs and games in the languages other than English. Over the eight ses-sions we only sang and played each song game twice.]

2. At another basic level, engaging in oral language is an aural/oral experience of sound generated interactively in a context of social interaction. An additional focus of my reflection on the Project was to address the question, “How did the folk song games structure the social engagement of those participating in the five languages of the project?”

It was apparent from the beginning that:

The Singing English games functioned like the ‘glue’ that held together the process model of perform-ing certain actions together in response to verbal cues. [This in itself reinforced the social visual/motor/auditory nature of attaining oral language. In addition, experiencing the process in the context of play opened the way for everyone to acquire a sense of belonging to a community of shared experi-ences which, of course, is fundamental to sharing oral language.]

The sound of the songs offered auditory cues for everyone to learn to know when, and what to do, no matter what the language.



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5 ‘Cadence’ in music refers to the endings of phrases or a song. In oral language it refers more to the patterns of tonal clustering of sounds within phrases.

After setting the model through Singing English and returning to it throughout each session, the proc-ess of focusing on one another even as we changed languages and leaders of games flowed with re-markable ease.

Neither adults nor children attained more than a sense of the general flow of the actions for most of the games other than those in Singing English.

From the children’s perspective it seemed that only the games in their mother tongue evoked a re-sponse showing a prior recognition of what might be going on.

Learning from parents was a common stance among all the children in all of the games. There was of-ten a noticeable time and movement lag in the children’s movement responses as they copied their parents’ actions for the games. That the languages were different did not seem to affect the children at all in learning to play the games.

The ability of the children to see, learn, and finally engage socially with the other adults and children in the group improved noticeably as the sessions moved along.

It is important to note that even if the parents and children did not ‘master’ the various songs and games, there was no evidence of frustration. The playful attitude of the games along with the realization among the adults that we were ‘all in the same boat’ so far as learning unfamiliar songs and games, made it possible for all to experience ‘being learners’ as a truly joyful experience. I believe that seeing this attitude among the adults freed the children to simply enjoy everything that was going on.



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Dr. Kadi Purru- from co-lingual perspective“The more we get together the happier we’ll be…” since February 7, 2008, we have begun our Saturday morning Song-Game Development: Co-lingual Family Literacy project meetings with these song-lines.

“There’s Gloria with Larry and Larry with Maki and Maki with Ty and Ty with Mamiko and Mamiko with Nubiola and Nubiola with Sawa and Sawa with Kishia and Kishia with Fleurette and Fleurette with Nicole and Nicole with Kadi and Kadi with Cynthia and Cynthia with Andres Felipe and Andres Felipe with…”

The song does not end until more than 30 participants, children between one and four years old, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, facilitators, community organizers and university researchers are all introduced and in-cluded.

I was honoured to be a participant of this multigenerational, multilingual, multicultural multi-skilled community gather-ing. In every session I witnessed the co-creation of linguistic and cultural spaces that moved from multi- inter- cross- …towards co-lingual and co-cultural spaces. And yet, can all the participants of the project be/come ‘ingenuously happy’ just by getting together? Can the co-lingual space be created just by sharing and learning different languages?

Canadian multiculturalism tolerates and encourages diversity, but within a framework that ensures the unquestionable English and French language-cultural supremacy along the lines of policy “all cultures and ethnic groups are equal in status within a bilingual framework” (Fleras, & Elliott, 2002, p. 77, emphasis mine6). In my opinion, this is a discriminatory



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6 Fleras, A., & J.L.Elliott. (2002). Engaging diversity: Multiculturalism in Canada. Australia, Canada, Mexico: Thomson Learning.

policy that violates linguistic human rights. Our project of co-creating co-lingual communities had to deal with the con-text of the hegemonic multiculturalism and linguistic imperialism of globalising English.

The co-lingual family literacy project was an attempt to move beyond the English-centred community programming and development of immigrant families’ ESL skills. Using Singing English as the ‘departure’ template, the intention of this project was to enhance the acquisition and appreciation of languages of the families from different linguistic communities as well as model culturally inclusive social interactions among the various participating neighborhood communities.

It was common to hear participants of the project sharing the stories of linguistic discrimination they have experienced in Canada. However, the moments of uplifting confidence and utter joy of recognition were also not rare during our gather-ings. They happened when the participants-facilitators shared their songs in Tagalog, Japanese, Spanish, and Mandarin with the community and when the participating families realized that the languages they speak at home were recog-nized, respected and deeply valued by the surrounding multilingual community.

As an immigrant parent and grandparent I feel em-powered - socially, culturally and linguistically – by the inclusive and participatory spaces that the Co-Lingual Song Game Family Literacy project created. The goal of my participation in the Co-lingual Song Game Family Literacy’s community project as an academic researcher was to support language diversity as well as to learn how different ‘immigrant’ languages undermine he-gemony of the dominant language, how the relation-ships between languages and cultures de-stabilize hier-archical multiculturalism by creating ‘co-cultural’ spaces. In order to come together the immigrant lan-guages in Canada have to cross not only cultural and ethnic differences but colonial indifferences.



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Dr. Kathleen Forsythe- from learning perspective

What a child learns while growing in language with his or her mother, father and family, is to coexist in a particular manner of living that has the enormous open-ended potential of doings that we experience as humans. Language evolved in humans in the biology of love, and it still is rooted in the pleasure of consensuality and intimacy. It is our coexistence as languaging beings that gives rise to all the dimensions of human existence. Yet we can live language in such a way that the learning of it in our children leads them to live in a manner that humans feel well in, and which makes living on this planet possible over the generations. 7

Over the course of the 8 weeks I observed the change in the children’s capacity to participate and to play together as part of such a loving community. This growth was most noticeable in the very youngest children (17 months and 20 months) who by the final week not only had understood the protocol of the workshop, were able to sit and observe and then par-ticipate.

“As a child grows in a human community he or she becomes a human being of the kind proper to the community in which he or she grows.” 8

The second area of significance that I observed was the obvious delight and engagement that occurred for the children whenever the game involved sensory motor activities such as turning, spinning, swinging, jumping. We know that these types of activities are essential for healthy development in children and parents were able to participate in activities that clearly show the child’s delight and capacity to engage. 9



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7 Bunnell, P. and K. Forsythe, (1999 )The Chain of Hearts: Teaching the Biology of Love, Proceedings of the BodyMind Con-

ference, Vancouver

8 Maturana, Humberto, ( 1996) Morals and Ethics in Education, unpublished essay

9 Ayers, A. Jean- Sensory Integration and the Child( 1979 , 2000) - Western Psychological Services, Los Angeles

I observed how quickly the children were able to follow the flow of the song. For example, when the song said “ Let’s stand-up!”…the children quickly participated by standing up, as they observed adults doing this. “Make a circle” and the children joined hands with the adults to make a circle…Even the younger children were able to demonstrate that they un-derstood the song …the 17-month-old child was observed to “shake his fingers down” at the appropriate moment in the song. The 20-month-old child was observed to stop and say “stop! " when the song said “ We walk and we stop!”.

In terms of the facilitators and parents, I observed significant changes in their openness to each other over the 8 weeks of the workshop. Parents readily helped with each other’s chil-dren as the sense of community arose through the song game play. I observed an eagerness to learn the language of an-other person and I observed the obvious pride that facilitators and parents exhibited in helping others to learn a song in their language. For people who do not live in English this experience clearly provided them with an arena where their competence and confidence in their own mother tongue could be highlighted. I believe that this had a profound effect on their willingness to also try the other languages and to use the Singing English songs with themselves and with their chil-dren.

Most significantly I observed the development of a loving community of interactions in which parents and children facili-tators and researchers were engaged in delight and mutual respect in learning each other’s languages.

“To educate in the biology of love is basically simple, we just have to be in the biology of love. We have to be with the children under our charge in education as we are with our friends, accepting them in their legitimacy even if we do not agree with them. All that our friends do is legitimate even when we object to their doings or are in serious discrepancy with them in that respect. In friendship discrepancies or disagree-ments are opportunities for reflections in expanding conversations, not occasions for mutual denial. This is why we can talk about everything with our friends. In friendships there are no demands, indeed when a demand appears, the friendship comes to an end. Finally, there is total mutual trust and openness for collaboration in friendship because we are with our friends and do things with them out of pleasure, not from obligation. Friendship is a word in our culture that, most of the time without our awareness, connotes the biology of love.”10



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10 Maturana, Humberto , (1990 ) Formación humana y capacitación, Dolmen Santiago ( author’s English translation , unpublished)

Dr. Jennifer Peterson – From digital ethnographic and media perspective:

Language is mediated by body and bodies. In modern culture this somatic and vibrational aspect of learning and its mul-tiplicity are often underestimated and thus often underestimated in structuring language learning activities and curric-ula. The notion of body and bodies is often practiced in a residual way during language learning. Yet all cultures have a pre-modern core relation to language that is aural-oral-somatic and thus naturally communal. The co-lingual method of family literacy with its emphasis on the aural-oral- somatic patterns begins a work of recollection in several ways:

For parents and facilitators the project offered a means to establish a recall to an older embodied reso-nance with an earlier body-language (somatic) learning (which is also resonant with childhood learn-ing and also cultural memory.) This recollection allowed the nesting of language–learnings via varied aural-oral-somatic scaffolds. These structures allowed learners to situate the languge-learnings, allow-ing these to seed, resonate and multiply. Thus this seemed to be a generative methodology.

As an effort was made to also practice this kind of cultural recollection utilizing cultural music-play patterns, this use of sound- somatic patterns gave a linkage permeable with core first language. For those who were culturally at home in the language this music-play-permeability seemed to provide a means stage and to share this knowledge in concert with new lingual patterns of another culture, lend-ing language learning an embodied pedagogy. This also seemed to allow participants to layer first lan-guage experiences with other languages relationally and co-lingually rather than imperialistically and competitively.

One cannot underestimate what happens through singing which uses body-breath resonance. These vibrational/bodied relations employed via sound and play seem to scaffold core language patterns into structures that also simultaneously enable a community resonance. The result was a repetitional , ‘remember(able)’ envelope which then worked as a container for growing a sense of community reso-nance and memory.

Thus – a sense of neighborhood which had been diffi-cult to locate in this diverse area – seem to seed and sediment here. It appeared to take root as a nest place – not just for baby, toddler, pre-school learner but also for elementary child, parents, grand parents, facilitators and researchers.

While at once playing with and practicing varied lan-guage patternings, the older members could also ‘play’ with varied poses – that of learner, teacher, friend, game member. Thus there was modeled and provided - a level of inquiry, comfort, and permission to fail, that was necessary in order to do the looking around and testing out that is necessary to learn from other bodies and their sounds.



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Thus both adults and children were given the space need to return to a somatic level of ‘play’ which maybe necessary to learn a language – The co-lingual family literacy project provided a kind of indirect means for adults to “for the sake of chil-dren” become learners. They were able to negotiate an important inquiry regards language as a musical-ity – as a cultural relation with breath and body. This musicality and play also became the means of (at the same time) negotiating protections regards the vulnerability and exposure (and shame) that learn-ing a language exposes one to.

As learning language found resonance with play-fulness and respect, the core (patterns, impulses and

movements) of other cultures also seemed to resonate with an older communal structure integral to all of these cultures. In many cultures family community is more focal than formal schooling, and historically was the means to passage on language as an eco-logical relation to culture and community.

And also a humorous (i.e.. humus)11 connection to culture and community was established. Thus hu-mor and playfulness came to be fore-grounded as a means of knowing.

Finally more than one adult (as opposed to solo teacher) was involved in co-creating this space. Again this ratio is more organic to the space of childhood and its familial communal relations in many cul-tures as opposed to formal school which focuses its learning transfers on one many adult for much of the time.

Thus when it came to the ethnographic media used as to gather research data regards this learning, we found a need to be continually locating in consonance with the moving bodies of the learners playing and singing these songs. Therefore our method also became increasingly embodied and thus resonant with body and bodies and the communal movements and ethos of the project.



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11 As well I would like to notice that humor and humus (earth) are linked as words attentive to ground. Just humor works to ground a release of the body through the breath, its musicality in laughter is infectious to a release that flows through a community. When the many cultural groups assembled in the room, were able to play and sing together they were also able to laugh together and this became a shared symbolic exchange, a sedimentative opportunity offered by many bodies. Thus there was the constant layering of experiences including those of body and bodies releasing nervousness into the community through song, laughter and play – These becoming absorbed, protected and grounded by the flow created by the song (and its patterns) as a it moved on…This flow often over-came an problematic over –exposure, exposure being often affiliated with school learning.

As but one of many examples of this phenomenon was the camera, itself. The camera present for the ethnographic data gathering of the project, began ‘its journey’ in the project as a formal object located on the periphery and detached edge

of the circle of song and dance. Stillness of filming was at first created, in an ef-fort to procure the objective viewpoint affiliated with research.

However the movement of the circle was at frustrating and interruptive in this regard. The movement of the circle and its games made it impossible to ‘fix a point of view.’ The desired fixed point of view was often blocked and often dis-located from the ever-changing focal points formed as the song games moved through the group. Tripods, though stabilizing the camera were often immedi-ately out dated as the circle moved. They proved rigid and difficult to alter - as bodies and songs formed a forest of movement around children (and also adults). By the end of filming, it was often “the stable camera” that had the worst shots of the events, and many shots seemed distracted by constant at-tempts to re-fix a view, the tripod. Many moments were lost to this stabilizing effort - and sounds became difficult to hear as the movement around the room changed in the focality of the sound source .

This problem was finally resolved organically as the num-ber of cameras seemed to multiply in a rather unplanned fashion through out the project. By the third week of the Saturday one hour sessions, there was a more deliberate effort situate multiple cameras, communally, embedding some of these inside the circle and stabilizing one outside (and at times) above the circle. The camera person had to bend their body with the children’s and the adults, and this positionality increasingly became a form of participation more than detachment. We were forced to accepting messy and immersed filming.

We decided to pair this data gathering with written obser-vations, audio field notes with the research team and sev-eral post-event interviews. This created a multiplicity of data gathering points. As this was organically dealt with, the act of observation itself came to an ecological relation with the group and its learning processes. As we stationed



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observers around the room we found that we were stationing ourselves as models of respect for this learning space. This respect spread as a practice, through the group and we found our selves infected by the inquiry of the participants as they modeled back to us a analytical regard for their learning space.

We found as the project went on, the facilitators especially became our keen observers. They began to speak of the language-learning processes and became increasingly confident in offering their observations. In this way the observing space became sedimented, training becoming another structure which scaffolded a richness of cultural co-learning layers.

A particularly poignant repetition occurred while filming: As it became clear that the camera could not remain central, technologically serene and separated from the sensuality of the forest of movements, vibrations, songs which were reso-nating through the group – many of us were drawn to the walking babies in the group. As they often wandered into the center of our circles, they looked from face to face, engaging in efforts to track the movements of various adults and chil-dren. These babies were often drawn to camera, spotting a still object in the room. As I wrote in my field notes:

“The babies would wander towards it, absorbing [the camera] in their gaze. They would try to pull it in with their little hands, somatically experiencing it, and also inviting it into the communal envelope formed around them. This event as it re-occurred over and over, mirrored for me, the camera person’ s dual problem - one related to invitation, participation, community, detachment, film-ing and research: the technological specular position we might affiliate with successful filming and also with suc-cessful research, seemed to be absorbed by the vitality of the experiential space and dear faces of the project. ”

I record another poignant moment in my field notes:

“Dr. Sweeney rejected the song brought to the group by the Japanese facilitators last week. It was an effort to attend co-culturally to something called a ‘core song.’ Dr. Sweeney said the song that had been brought for-ward was actually a western-sounding motif. After this somewhat frustrating moment, the group went away and came back this week, with a haunting lullabye. When they sung it together the room became quiet in a way that is difficult to describe quantitatively and qualitatively. It was clear that the Japanese facilitators had found their ‘core song.’ With the lullabye, there came into the group a hush. Later Dr. Forsythe commented that this breath pattern and heartbeat was the mark of the lullabye and the means of aligning the child’s breath with the calm and slowed mother’s breath and pulse. In that Japanese lullabye and the silence that followed it - was also a poignancy. As the children themselves leaned into their parents bodies and parents leaned into



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their children’s bodies forming a cradle space, this poignancy was interesting to experience. This potency seemed to come back to us, whenever we alighted on this song, becoming a kind of shared mem-ory, and a kind of grounding chord for the group.”

I highlight these moments **in order to emphasize the ephemeral learning as cultural exchanges that embroi-dered their way through this project and remain to be analyzed as part of the rich data gathered by the initial research.



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Sharing the Experience

The experience of the project was profound on many levels. At the end of the project all 8 facilitators said they wanted to continue in some manner to do this type of work and, more importantly, they all said they felt confident enough to do so.

To this end, the following projects have already been initiated.

The Spanish-speaking Facilitator , Gloria Botero, has met with Annette Coffin , the Director of Music Education for the Coquitlam school Board to see if she can initiate a song game program with the parents and grandparents who bring children to her local school. The two languages will be Farsi and Spanish.

The Mandarin- speaking Facilitator, Celine Yeung, has initiated a project with Mandarin speaking grandparents in which she wishes to introduce the song game concept. Some of the Mandarin speaking grandparents had actu-ally participated in a Singing English program with Dr. Sweeney and attended the facilitator training to share their songs with the new facilitators.

In addition:

A Roundtable Presentation was made on May 30, 2008 to the Language and Literacy Researchers of Canada 5th Annual pre-CSSE Conference held at the University of British Columbia. The presentation, titled “The More We Get Together the Happier We’ll Be : Toward Co-lingual and Co-cultural Family Literacies” was given by Dr. Kadi Purru, Dr. Fleurette Sweeney, Dr. Jill Fitzell, Dr. Kathleen Forsythe and Dr. Jennifer Peterson. Video clips from the program were used to highlight the project. The United Way Community Innovations Program was credited.

The Final Report will be published and made available by the Living Language Institute Foundation

A DVD of clips from the project will also be made available by the Living Language Institute Founda-tion.

The song game material consisting of booklets and a CD will be made available to the participants in the project and will also be used in future projects.



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Conclusion

After the project was submitted by the Marpole Oakridge Family Place in September, 2008, Dr. Jill Fitzell resigned as Ex-ecutive Director of the Marpole Oakridge Family Place. As it took several months to replace her, an agreement was made that she would stay on contract to work with Living Language Institute Foundation to implement the Song Game Devel-opment project. Due to this circumstance, Living Language Institute took on a dominant role in the project and has pre-pared this report. Marpole Oakridge Family Place was involved in identifying the families and facilitators who worked in the project. Dr. Fitzell remained involved throughout the project to provide leadership in the community development aspect of the work.

What we learned

We tapped into something very significant for immigrant families. From the reactions of both the facilitators that we trained and the parents and grandparents involved , we discovered that they really valued the opportunity to interact with people from other linguistic groups in an environment of mutual respect. Many of them have struggled to learn English and adapt to the dominant culture. It was refreshing for them to be in an environment in which their culture was being brought forward along with English as being legitimate. This co-lingual learning environment is very different than the more typical ESL or multicultural approaches which still involve adaptation to the dominant culture.

Co-lingual learning is a new way of approaching and interacting with and between families from different cultures. It differs from existing bilingual, multilingual ESL dominant literacy models. Our work in creating co-lingual and co-culture community spaces is experiential, experimental and transformative.

We learned that families from different linguistic groups are thrilled and excited to have a forum where they and their children can learn and play together. This does not happen quickly or easily. A safe space must be co-created by engag-ing families in the process. The song games became the “glue” that allowed intergenerational play as well as play among people who may not have shared any language even English.

We learned that the song games can provide a vehicle for generating community through social interactions across cul-tural and language differences. This project taught us how multiple cultures can come together in co-lingual participa-tory praxis.

What Next?

The Living Language Institute Foundation has applied to Community Innovations for an additional year to show how the project can be expanded into different linguistic communities in Vancouver.

The Living Language Institute Foundation plans to apply to the Vancouver Foundation for funds to develop co-lingual song game events throughout the Lower Mainland designed to generate commu-nity.



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Appendices

Appendix 1

Facilitator’s NameMamiko Sekine

Yoko Konoshima

Sawa Hataho

Mary Wan Lee Fai

Celine Yeung

Sharon Tong

Gloria Botero

Nubiola Rodriguez

Kathryn Dula



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Song Game Development ProjectFamily Registration

March 29, April 5, 12, 26, May 3, 10, 24, 31Saturdays 10:30 – 11.30 am

8 weeks

Mum/Dad’s Name Child’s Name & AgeMamiko Sekine Reo (3 years)

Maki Motozono Ty Semba (3 years) + baby brother Riku (1 year)

Sawa Hataho Kesha + Janefield (8 years and 3 years)

Lina Cao Cynthia (3 years) and baby brother Larry (1 year)

Ruby Huang Kevin (3 years) + friend Matthew (3 years)

May Guo Ryan (3 years) + Trevor (5 years)

Win Tao Son ( 3 years)

Andres Felipe and Beatrice Nicole (3, 5 years)

Joanna Talingdan (and Angel, grandma)

Jeash (5 years)

10 adults total 14 children total



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Appendix 2

June 2008 United Way Community Innovations Grant $28,056.00

Jill Fitzell Project coordinationDecember – June $ 2,730.00

Marpole Oakridge Family Place Accounting February 1 – June 30 5.5 hrs p. month @ $30.00 x 5 months $ 825.00 Office supplies and equipment $ 220.00

Lunches and snacks $ 182.25

RentFriends Meeting House (8 mornings + 3 full days) $ 640.00

Parent facilitatorsFebruary 16, 23 Mar 8 3 all day Song Game design wkshps $ 4,500.00 March – May 8 Family am workshops $ 4,500.00

Living Language Institute Foundation Program development and Training materials $ 12,610.00 $ 26,207.25

Unspent $ 1,848.75



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Appendix 3 The Songs

Appendix 4 Materials



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Documents

CO-LINGUAL SONG GAME DEVELOPMENT PROJECT · PDF fileCO-LINGUAL SONG GAME DEVELOPMENT PROJECT MARPOLE OAKRIDGE FAMILY PLACE & LIVING LANGUAGE INSTITUTE FOUNDATION JULY 2008 Final Report