Week Four: A Tree Is Following Me

I think the moment where my language abilities made me feel important was when I was in the second grade. In the class our teacher focused a lot of time in making projects based on a book that we read in class. The book we read was The Great Kapok Tree, and that book has been involved in my life so many times after I read it in the second grade. The book was essentially about trying to stop a lumberjack from cutting down a tree in the rain forest by having the animals talk to him while he sleeps. The animals would each tell them how important the tree was to them, when the man woke up he saw all the animals and decided not to cut down the tree. I loved this as a kid because of the animals so it got my attention. But the teacher was also making learn about how we should save the rain forest and be good to the environment.

After we read the story, the teacher made us turn the book into a play for our parents. Since it was a bilingual class we got to read both versions of the text. We understood it when we read the Spanish version but the play helped us understand it in the English version. It gave us a chance to get a perspective on why the rain forest was so important. And in the play I was the porcupine which sucked because I wanted to be the jaguar. As a class we started to learn about how the rain forest was being destroyed by reading small articles, looking at pictures and watching videos. Our literacy about the background of the story was expanding every time. Most of our writing was centered on the rain forest and the animals so I was really enjoying what we were doing in class. The most important project we did was sending President Clinton cards, that we made ourselves, telling to stop cutting down the trees in the rain forest. I designed my card with a jaguar pop-up with both Spanish and English writing. This project was helping us understand how to write in English and in Spanish. It was fun taking a stand about something that the whole class was passionate about and it felt great when we got a letter back saying that our cards have been read. Our teacher was passionate about this and her passion was transfer to all of us in that class.

What we did in that class will always stay with me because it always finds a way to come back when it slips my mind. In fifth grade we read the book again and did another play about the book and this time I was able to be the jaguar. Another moment came when I was working in the Literacy center in CSUSB. I was tutoring a boy in the second grade and we always start off by reading which ever book he finds in the library. The boy found The Great Kapok Tree which was surprising to me because I’ve been working there for a year now and I’ve never seen that book in the shelves. It was a joy watching the second grader read the book and start to comprehend what the book was about, took a stand for something you think is important.