Activity 4 “All About ” (The students research and write about different countries and complete visa information sheets) Essential Questions: What does culture mean and why is it important? Why are cultures around the world different from each other? How are cultures the same? How do people live in other countries? How does learning about other cultures help us understand and interact with people who are different from us? Knowledge and Understanding: Students will understand what culture means and why it is important. They will also be able to describe how cultures are the same and different and how people live in different parts of the world. Students will learn how understanding different cultures will help them to become good citizens of the world. Students will participate in a group project that will demonstrate their empathy for others. They will complete a social studies binder called “The World and My Place In It” that will feature the work they have accomplished throughout the unit. Differentiation: It would be particularly helpful for English Language Learners to be asked to compare their heritage culture with another culture so that they can draw upon their prior knowledge of their own culture to make comparisons and to validate their life experience. But first, in order to accomplish the more challenging academic tasks of researching information about a culture and comparing it to another to achieve an understanding of the meaning of “culture,” English Language Learners need to be explicitly taught how to ask questions about their own families and their community. They will need scaffolding and modeling to learn how to answer these questions both verbally and in writing. Finally, in order to communicate their new awareness, they need to be taught to compile their information into meaningful formats that can be shared with others such as short essays, power-point presentations and mini-books. Only when English Language Learners s have been taught the more complex “academic” language that is needed for such “higher-order” tasks as researching, comparing, and presenting their knowledge orally and in writing, can they then successfully engage in activities that will facilitate their exploration of their own and other cultures. Only when they have achieved a better understanding of the role that culture plays in their own lives through reading appropriate literature and engaging in meaningful discussions in their classroom, can English Language Learners then begin to make the leap to a more global understanding of how cultures differ, how world communities interact, and how they, as individuals, can develop empathy for people of other cultures.
Activity 4 “All About ” (The students research and write about different countries and complete visa information sheets) Essential Questions: What does culture mean and why is it important? Why are cultures around the world different from each other? How are cultures the same? How do people live in other countries? How does learning about other cultures help us understand and interact with people who are different from us? Knowledge and Understanding: Students will understand what culture means and why it is important. They will also be able to describe how cultures are the same and different and how people live in different parts of the world. Students will learn how understanding different cultures will help them to become good citizens of the world. Students will participate in a group project that will demonstrate their empathy for others. They will complete a social studies binder called “The World and My Place In It” that will feature the work they have accomplished throughout the unit. Differentiation: It would be particularly helpful for English Language Learners to be asked to compare their heritage culture with another culture so that they can draw upon their prior knowledge of their own culture to make comparisons and to validate their life experience. But first, in order to accomplish the more challenging academic tasks of researching information about a culture and comparing it to another to achieve an understanding of the meaning of “culture,” English Language Learners need to be explicitly taught how to ask questions about their own families and their community. They will need scaffolding and modeling to learn how to answer these questions both verbally and in writing. Finally, in order to communicate their new awareness, they need to be taught to compile their information into meaningful formats that can be shared with others such as short essays, power-point presentations and mini-books. Only when English Language Learners s have been taught the more complex “academic” language that is needed for such “higher-order” tasks as researching, comparing, and presenting their knowledge orally and in writing, can they then successfully engage in activities that will facilitate their exploration of their own and other cultures. Only when they have achieved a better understanding of the role that culture plays in their own lives through reading appropriate literature and engaging in meaningful discussions in their classroom, can English Language Learners then begin to make the leap to a more global understanding of how cultures differ, how world communities interact, and how they, as individuals, can develop empathy for people of other cultures.