Ananse's Feast

Ananse’s Feast is a claymation project with a twist. The children in Rhea Perreira-Foyle’s grade 4/5 special education class worked hard to learn this story about the Ghanaian trickster spider, Ananse, who is a popular figure in the Caribbean. They rescripted the narrative of Ananse’s Feast in textbook English, fashioned the story characters out of clay, built the backdrop, and created a stop motion animation. They then narrated their claymation video, each child bringing his or her voice into the production. Following their collaborative reading in English, the teacher introduces language variation by using a regional creolized English. The claymation is twice told: once in standard English and again in Trinidadian, thus valuing regional Englishes, while teaching textbook English.