Ebonics And Standard English: Chapter Analysis

Lisa Delpit addressed Ebonics and culturally responsive instruction in chapter four, What Should Teachers Do? The core concepts of the chapter are how to address in the classroom students who speak Ebonics or use their home dialect within school. The first approach I personally thought would be successful is having the students create a bilingual dictionary between their personal dialect and Standard English. I created something similar to a dictionary in a class here at Radford that was teaching code switching. The concept was difficult, but fun when I was trying to create the list of words I say differently than people who speak Standard English. In my future classroom I plan to use this approach when teaching my students grammar. Another helpful method discussed would be

The author makes an interesting point that if a child switches to their own dialect they have to be able to first comprehend the sentence then switch when reading aloud. I never really thought about that approach to a person when I have heard them reading aloud. The next method I found creative and useful for my classroom is having my students take on a role in a play or famous person and have the students video tape themselves. By having the students watch their recording they could self-edit themselves to help them realize when they were switching to their dialect. Also the teacher could approach the grammar correction in saying is that how the person they are portraying would speak? The approach also for the students to have fun, be creative, and learn Standard English in a new way. A method I have been taught and I have personally taught mini lessons on is having a sentence said aloud and the class or an individual has to respond with the Standard English version. This method can be fun and easy way to help students hear the dialect and Standard English