Learning to Develop Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: A Lesson About Cornrowed Lives

This article describes the process of using African American children's literature through culturally relevant pedagogy. It chronicles how two teachers carefully plan a lesson using the literature, and then describes how one of the teachers enacts the lesson using pedagogy relevant to her students' cultural background. A framework that focused on the cultural patterns of the students' lives was used to help guide the planning process. The components of the lesson include a prereading activity, read aloud, group discussion, journal writing, and a follow-up activity. In the end, the teachers found that tailoring instruction to fit the textual, social, cultural, and personal lives of their students is largely about seeing pedagogy through the norms and practices of their students' lives.