Wooch.een yei jigax̱toonéi (working together)

To be successful at anything takes practice - especially learning how to play an instrument or speak a new language - both depend upon practice happening outside of the classroom and on a daily basis.

This page is dedicated to help make that happen! Each week families can check this page for updates to find out what their child/grandchild is learning in the JAMM Haa Tóo Yéi Yatee program and reinforce learning by practicing at home together: wooch.een jigax̱toonéi (working together). We hope these online resources will help make it easier and fun!

Suggestion: When practicing with the videos, listen and move along to them without singing or speaking for at least the first seven times/viewings. After seven times, then speak or sing along. That way, learners have a better chance of pronouncing the phrases correctly and make a strong neural pathway in the brain the first time!
Week of August 23rd: This first week of school is focused on greeting, counting from 1 - 10 and building that upper body strength so that little arms will be ready to hold the violin. 
Tip: ask your child to pick a different action (hop, jump, dance, etc.) each time the counting takes place to keep it fun and interactive.
Tip: As a family or class, practice both the singular and plural forms of standing and sitting up. Can you keep up as it gets faster?
Week of August 30th: This week we focused on the value of working together.
Tip: While singing, Jinkasee.ee Rose Willard shared the importance of harvesting and sharing these foods with others. Students gestured spear fishing and berry picking while dancing. They also learned to extend their hands out to the opposite clan while dancing to send their love to them.
Tip: This song is a singing game: one child walks and beats the drum around a standing circle while the song is sung. The drummer hands the drum to the person closest to them when the song ends. They change places and the game continues with a new drummer. Once a child has drummed, they sit down and tap the beat on their legs.
Week of September 6th: As children begin to learn the parts of the g̱ix̱ʼjaa (violin), we make connections to their own body parts. 
Tip: Remember to keep your arms above your head to build upper body strength to hold the violin.
Tip: "Ax̱" is "my" and "A" is "its" in Lingít. That is why we use ax̱ in the Head and Shoulders song, and "a" when pointing to parts of the g̱ix̱ʼjaa (violin).
Week of September 13th: We are ready to learn more ways to express how we feel and learn more parts of the violin. Koolyéiḵ Roby Littlefield has been sharing feeling phrases through her furry and feathered friends :)  Follow along with X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell as he pronounces each part.
Tip: Koolyéiḵ models how families can take turns asking each other "How are you?" through her furry and feathered friends. Learn the different feeling phrases and encourage children to sing to their stuffed toys :)
Tip: Repeat after X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell as he pronounces each part of the violin in Lingít. If you are interested in an introduction to Lingít sounds, check out his video.
Week of September 20th: Now that the papier-mache g̱ix̱ʼjaa is ready to use, students are learning how to stand, hold it and take a bow. We also use song to help us remember the parts of the g̱ix̱ʼjaa. The second video shares the voices of some of our 1st grade students and why they like learning Lingít.
Tip: We will sing this song at our Paper Violin concert in November. Itʼs never too early to start practicing.
First Grade Students Share Why They Like Learning Lingít
Week of September 27th: Music is a powerful tool to bring ritual and routine to our lives. It also provides a safe space for children to stretch their learning. The two examples below show how we prepare students for the classroom, asking them to stand tall like trees while singing "Haa gax̱ latseení" (let us be strong!). This acts as a waiting song. Then they sing, Wáa sá iyatee? (How are you?) as an entrances song. The other video shows the integral role that our Lingít language coaches, Nae Brown and Koolyéiḵ Roby Littlefield, play in the classroom. The children love them!
Week of October 4th: Jinkasee.ee Rose Willard, our cultural specialist, shared the history of the song Wooch.een, written by Kingeistí David Katzeek and sung by Yuxgitsiy George Holly. The movements that she teaches the children reflect the harvesting practices of the Lingít people: picking berries and spearing fish. The second video by Koolyéiḵ Roby Littlefield explains how to make a Lingít drum.
Week of October 11th: Haa Tóo Yéi Yatee is a Lingít language revitalization project, but also a reinvisioning of our JAMM violin curriculum. The first video reflects how we have revised our curriculum to be more place-based. As the children learn how to hole a g̱ix̱ʼjaa - we imagine standing strong together like a forest, looking up in the sky and seEing an eagle as we hold our violins upward, and then gently place our violin on our branches as though itʼs a nest. Our jaw gently rests on the "nest" so that we donʼt injure the eggs as we show respect for all things. George Hollyʼs song paying respect to the Aas Ḵwaaní (Tree People) is sung as we practice standing still.
Week of October 18th: This week was parent teacher conferences, but we did want to share a presentation that Nae Brown and Lorrie Heagy gave as part of the National Network of Teachers of the Year "All for Equity" conference. The other video is a Reading Rainbow episode, which shows how a g̱ix̱ʼjaa is made.
Week of October 27th: Yes, itʼs Halloween week, so we shared a folktale from Norway that was the inspiration behind Edward Griegʼs "In the Hall of the Mountain King." We started exploring rhythmic notation and looking at ways to represent rhythm in Lingít. Vocables (sound words with no meaning) often used in Lingít songs will inspire our work.
Week of November 1st: Last week we looked at rhythmic notation. This week we look at melodic tools like solfege (Italian and French origin) to express pitch and notes of a scale. We use color to represent each note of a scale, modeled after Figurenotes, which is a Finnish approach to learning how to read music. Colors are expressed as metaphors in Lingít, so each note of the scale is assigned a color through its likeness to something found in nature: black (i.e. katʼooch - like charcoal). 
Week of November 8th: While the paper g̱ix̱ʼjaa is in the workshop getting the rest of its parts put in place, we introduced the sáks (bow) by singing the folksong, "Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night." We are working on translating the entire song into Lingít, but in the meantime replaced fox with "naag̱asʼéi" and town with "aan." The students also were introduced to Lingít Twinkle, which Nora Dauenhauer Kexwnéi translated. 
Week of November 15th:
Huna Lullaby sung by Yuxgitsiy George Holly
Tribute to Grandma Rita: Traditional Yupik Healer