questions and color

Today my class had a great moment talking about the elections. Developing specific time for learning and experimenting with oral language is so key for ELLs and today I wanted them to discuss and develop questions for the presidential candidates. We have been talking about the elections and, as a project, they are polling other classes during lunch with a few questions we will later put in tables and bar graphs, etc.

Anyway, I gave them some sentence starters such as “do you think…” and “what will you do about…” and “why…” we came up with a few together, and it gave me a sense that there has been some real conversations during their polling. For example, here are some of their questions (the way they worded them):

Senator McCain, why don’t you like Obama?
… what will you do about the environment?
… will people from other countries have to leave if you are president?
… why do you want to be President?

Why do some people not like Obama because he is brown?
Why do some people care about the color (of Obama’s skin)?
Why do people have to vote for President?

Senator Obama, what will you do if the people vote for a tie?
… what will you do about the environment?
… do you like to ride bicycles?
… who will you vote for?
… why do you want more war?
… where are you from?

And then, as they were finishing writing down their own questions that we will later post on a “town hall wall”, some kids started raising their hands and asking each other questions saying, “I would like to ask Jennifer, who do you want to vote for AND WHY?” I put the last but in caps because I was really impressed that 1. They thought to ask a two-part question and 2. They seemed genuinely interested in the answer.

Remember, some of these students have a lot of difficulty getting their thoughts formed in English and using auxiliary verbs like “do” can be tricky. Only one student said she liked McCain and at first it was because she felt Obama was too “brown and gross”. The kids quickly started saying “the color shouldn’t care” and asking each other if they “care about the color”. This allowed me to teach them the phrase “shouldn’t matter” and “skin color”.

I was really pleased how they got into it.

Finally, one student started to ask kids who they would vote for and if it mattered who wins. Most kids were really adamant that they wanted Obama to win but one girl said it didn’t matter because nothing would really change from how they have been. Pretty heavy cynicism from an 8-year-old!