Phase II of Micro Lesson 2: K'e- Navajo Kinship and Clanship

    1.           Instructional Decisions/Teaching: Discuss the implementation process and describe

Second Lesson “K’e Kinship” was a unit on Navajo cultural teaching for students to learn the establishment of familial and clan relationships, known as kinship. Kinship is one of five key points of K’e. Students learn about the importance of Kinship through the Navajo teachings and responsibilities. Understanding the background information of K’e, and specifically Kinship in this lesson will assist students to acknowledge and identify their clan affiliation or embrace their heritage.
In the first activity, students will learn the Navajo custom of introduction. Activity One, students reviewed and wrote their introduction in English and Navajo. Two suggestions/modifications I made to the lesson is knowing some of my students are not of the Navajo origin; suggested to the students to use either the sheet of Non-native ethnicities, a sheet that include the names of the other ethnicities and it’s translation into Navajo and the modification I made is giving students a sheet of the Navajo clans, have them pick out random clans to use for their introduction. This was the first time the students were introduce to the language, specific cultural standard, and typing using the Navajo keyword layout. Another modification I made to the lesson is shorting the activity by allowing the students to include their mother’s and father’s origin/clans written in English and Navajo due to time constrain and content. The content of lesson included an individual: who has been taught the stress and intonation of vowels, and letters, developed some vocabulary of Navajo, practiced speaking Navajo words and sentences. The group of students I implemented my lesson were not practicing or writing the Navajo Language, they were placed into a lesson that required much prior knowledge and conditioning of the Navajo Language. I did not want to overwhelm the students with the new information about Navajo cultural and language/vocabulary. I made my lesson very general and required students to speak two sentences. When overall, the students speak more than 5 sentences in their introduction.

Slide 1:
This is simplified structured Navajo introduction using number listings  referring to sentences.  Each number presents the needed clan affiliation or cultural/ethnic origin. Students understood the 1. is your mother's clan or ethnic/cultural  origin; 2. is your father's clan; 3. Your maternal grandfather's clan; Your paternal grandfather's clan; 4. in that way I am young woman or In that way I am a young man. This student selected clans from a clan chart to use for her introduction.

Slide 2:
Students had to type the introduction into Navajo. As you can see the student's used the Navajo keyboard system,  however it is not in the Navajo Roman Times font due to the fact I want to show the student's understanding of the numbers and symbols keys that contain the Navajo characters. The 3 Navajo A's correspond on the keyboard to the 1-2-3 keys. 3 Navajo E's correspond to the keys 4-5-6. 3 Navajo I's are the keys  7-8-9. The 3 Navajo O's correspond on the keyboard to the 0, -, =. Slash L corresponds to the [ (left bracket). Accent N corresponds to the ] (right bracket).

Students had to record their typed Navajo introduction by speaking in Navajo, that is why there is a record icon on this slide.  

• What you did and learned from the teaching/facilitating process

Teaching the lesson to my classmates acting as the targeted student age group, it was challenging task because the students had no prior teaching of the basics in the Navajo language. Lesson was made for students with an understanding of the meaning of K’e, who had learned the four key points of K'e from a previous lesson covering the components of peace, unity, respect, and social relationships. Students who had learned these components further supported students to acquire learning the last component of K'e, which is Kinship. Additionally, students were taught how to pronounce letters with a nasal or high tone mark by stressing the vowel or constant in a word. Facilitating the lesson to the group of students, unknown to the language and cultural background information was subjectively challenging because I felt I was rushing into the lesson without proper teaching of vocabulary words and their pronunciation. As the teacher, I did not want my students to feel uncomfortable with pronunciation, since this was their first time speaking the Navajo language and did not want to stress the students about importance of speaking Navajo correctly.  Therefore, I allowed room for error in their speaking and only practicing two sentences of their Navajo introduction instead what I had planned originally was about five to six sentences include in their Introduction. Also, I assist students in pronouncing the clan they picked or ethnic origin they wanted to include in their Introduction. After I had pronounced the word or words, they would recite the word back to me and I would correct their pronunciation, if necessary. Overall, I learned in an actually classroom, students range from all different speaking levels, it is hard to keep the whole class on the same speaking level. Some students may need more practice than others, I need to accommodate those students and did incorporate for the assessment rubric; if  the student received 1 on scale of 4 to 1, 1 is the lowest and the student must come in after school or before to bring up their grade by practicing their pronunciation until it is fully improved. Lastly, I learned teaching a new concept to a group of students unknown to the language; I should modify my lesson plan to simple lesson such as a beginning intro to the Navajo language by emphasizing certain Navajo words or verbs. Alternative to this lesson would be teaching the students simple everyday English words like yes, no, my, yours, boy and girl (opposite words) and numbers. I believe this would be more helpful to the students introduced to the Navajo language on day 1 of the lesson.

Also in facilitating the learning process for the students, I provided a  power point slide identifying the  important highlights of Kinship and clan affiliation. I thought providing a power point slide would help the students, classmates to understand background information about the Unit of K'e for visual representation purposes.  Also, in the power point slides I provided the layout of the structured Navajo introduction written in both English and Navajo. 

• How alignment to goals and objectives was maintained

Modifications I made to the lesson did not interfere with my goals; however some of my objectives were not emphasized due to the time strain only permitted the first activity. I still maintained the lesson plan concentrated objectives; students became more familiar with the location of the keys in the Navajo font series, students identify their clan affiliation and cultural/ethnic origin, and recite the Traditional Navajo Introduction. The main goal of the lesson plan was to implement a new component of K'e, teaching the students about Kinship through cultural background information of the Navajo traditional teachings: behavior, respecting/acknowledging clanship, importance of one's self relationship to our surroundings, and clan affiliation. Students will connect all the meanings of K'e and understand its importance in the Navajo cultural and self-identity is sacred.

   2.            Assessment of Learning: Describe the evidence you have that indicates: your students' level of success in achieving the lessons goals and the level of success you had in teaching the lesson

From majority of the student's assessment results, they achieved success of the required objectives with activity one. The students made a power point presentation of their introduction typed in English and Navajo included clan affiliation or cultural/ethnic origin of the mother and father. Finalizing the power point, all students recited the two sentences of the structured introduction spoken in Navajo, recording on the second slide: 1) Your mother's clan/origin. 2) Your father's clan or origin (one you are born for). All students spoke in Navajo exceedingly well, with minor pronunciation mistakes such as not stressing or intonations words that contain nasal, high tone, constants, and diphthongs.
Inclusively the success of lesson plan, I think I could have done better at preparing students to speak in Navajo such as briefly touching base with the pronunciation of words or letters that different to English words and letters. Provide students with cognates, a tool for learning a second language. Students of English learn to use the knowledge of cognates to build an extensive base of pronouncing and learning Navajo vocabulary. Cognate words that exhibit the following characteristic: two words that have the same or similar meaning and have nearly the same spelling in both of the languages increases Second language learners vocabularies and the ability to figure out new words and learn vocabulary in Navajo. Navajo and English words do have similarities of the vowel system (a, e, i, o, u), English lettering, and the stem of the word, its spelling is closely related to English word like Shima, ma is mom and shi is the pronoun of I, mine concluding my mom. These cognates give students a foundation of vocabulary. When students can identify cognates from their first language it increases the knowledge of vocabulary of words they already know. Another strategy is the use memory tricks for pronouncing a word by pausing in between letters of a word, thus dividing the word into smaller parts. Thru the use of metacognitive strategies are memorable, this type of instructional strategy positively impact students who may have difficulty saying long words by breaking down the word into easier words will be beneficial to the student. The strategy provides students an efficient way to acquire, store, and express prior- related words. Memory trick provides students who have memory problems an efficient way to retrieve from memory information they have learned.


• How do your individual reflections support this?
• How do the comments from your classmates support this?


Feedback from my classmates provide evidence my lesson was successful but they mentioned the same concern about pronunciation of the Navajo was challenging. I had asked my students the following question: What part of the lesson was the least favorite? Mostly all feedback within this question suggested speaking in Navajo was their least favorite part of the lesson. Based off my own reflection of the lesson I mentioned I did not prepare the students to speak in Navajo by teaching them pronunciation of the words needed for the structured introduction. I should have broken down the long Navajo words; students will have more confidence pronouncing the Navajo words. Surely, I wanted to challenge the students with an unfamiliar language, however on my part I should have better provided learning strategies for students to pronounce the new Navajo vocabulary. And during my lesson told the students it is okay with making mistakes in pronunciation and by making a mistake in pronunciation is not wrong. It is the student's first time speaking the Navajo language.