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36 As a teacher, how can I use this book in my classroom? This book was written to be read simply as a story to individual students or to students during group time as the basis of a lesson focusing on language differences between people. The characters demonstrate positive personal attributes and the stories offer new vocabulary and rich literary forms set in interesting contexts. This book emphasizes one grammatical feature: the agreement of subjects and verbs in number and person. Although the book emphasizes subject- verb agreement, you will notice that other features of AAE are produced as well, as would be typical in conversations among AAE speakers. If you want to engage your students in a discussion of the different ways that the characters in this book talk, we recommend the following. 1. Discuss AAE as “home language” and ME as “school language”. These terms align well with existing research showing that speakers tend to use their heritage language forms in their own communities and shift to AAE at times when they are talking to other speakers of AAE, the setting is more informal, and the topics are about familiar and personal or shared topics. Speakers use ME more in settings requiring formal forms of talk, such as requesting something of a person of higher social status, for example a child addressing an adult neighbor, a store owner, or the principal of the school. 2. It is important to keep these conversations positive— remember there is nothing either good or bad about speaking a dialect; we all do it. Simply, it is an advantage to be able to speak ME for school tasks, such as reading. Additional readings • Bloome, D., Katz, L., & Champion, T. (2003). Young children’s narratives and ideologies of language. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 19 (2), 205–224. • Craig, H. K., & Washington, J. A. (2006). Malik goes to school: Examining the language skills of African American students from preschool–5th grade. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. • Rickford, J. R., Sweetland, J., Rickford, A. E., & Grano, T. (2013). African American, Creole and other vernacular Englishes in education. New York, NY: Routledge and National Council of Teachers of English. • Terry, N. P. (2008). Addressing African American English in early literary assessment and instruction. Perspectives on Communication Disorders and Sciences in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations, 15, 54–61. • Wheeler, R. S., & Swords, R. (2006). Code-Switching: Teaching Standard English in urban classrooms (Theory & Research Into Practice). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Principles for Subject-Verb Agreement with –s and past tense “was/were” SCHOOL LANGUAGE SENTENCES HOME LANGUAGE SENTENCES “This garden needs work” “This garden need work” “We were surprised that anything grew at all” “We was surprised that anything grew at all” FORMAL PRINCIPLES INFORMAL PRINCIPLES PRESENT TENSEWITH –S PRESENT TENSEWITH –S Number of subject and present tense verbs always agree Number of subject and present tense verbs agree sometimes and do not agree at other times –s is more likely to be excluded: • when the bare verb form ends in a consonant sound –s is more likely to be included: • when the bare verb form ends in a vowel sound PAST TENSE “WAS/WERE” PAST TENSE “WAS/WERE” “Was” is used with singular subjects. “Were” is used with plural subjects. “Was” is used with both singular and plural subjects.