|
Overview:
In this lesson young students will use a variety of media to explore culture as the sum of learned patterns of behavior, institutions, values, and belief systems. Students will learn how to identify, compare, and appreciate the cultural characteristics of different regions and people.
Connections to the Curriculum:
Geography, social studies, language arts, science, math
Connections to the National Geography Standards:
Standard 10: "The characteristics, distribution, and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics"
Time:
Three to five hours
Materials Required:
- World atlases
- Blank Xpeditions outline maps, available at the Xpeditions atlas
- National Geographic magazines, National Geographic Traveler and Kids magazines
- Picture books or early-reader books that show cultures around the world
- Drawing paper and markers
- Fabric for making banners and quilts
- National Geographic Picture Pack—Cultural Geography of the World (optional)
Objectives:
Students will
- become intimately familiar with at least one foreign culture and versed in aspects of many others.
Geographic Skills:
Asking Geographic Questions
Acquiring Geographic Information
Answering Geographic Questions
S u g g e s t e d P r o c e d u r e
Opening:
Invite students and their families to bring artifacts and regalia that reflect their ethnic origins into the classroom. Examples might include traditional or contemporary clothing, foods, toys, tools, photographs, religious icons, foreign language tapes and books, and decorative arts. Include almanacs and atlases in this "cultural discovery center."
Development:
Discuss with your class the many elements of a culture. These include languages, belief systems (e.g., religions, customs, ideals, and values), institutions (e.g., laws, educational practices, and political and family structures), and technology (e.g., tools and skills).
Challenge students to answer geographic questions such as the following about one culture:
- How would members of a culture group define their way of life?
- What material goods have been created and used by this group? Why?
- What skills has the group developed and utilized?
- What are the behaviors that the group transmits through imitation, institution, and example to each successive generation?
- What are the group's land-use practices and policies?
- What economic activities are characteristic of the group?
- How are the group's settlements organized?
- What cultural attitudes define gender roles, educational ideologies and philosophies, and traditional holiday observances?
Organize students into small "geography detective" teams. Instruct the teams to identify, select, and research specific languages, beliefs, institutions, and technologies that are characteristic of a single culture. Have them describe the children in that culture.
Provide opportunities for each team to discuss its findings with the whole class. What generalizations and conclusions did the students develop? What questions were left open-ended for further investigation and consideration?
Closing:
Have students create a cultural celebration quilt or banner. Student teams should select fabrics, make sketches, and write slogans on pieces of discarded sheets, and find small trinkets that reflect the culture of the region or country that they studied. Have them consult maps and images, and use a blank outline map from the Xpeditions atlas to show the place that they are celebrating. After enlisting family members or older students to assist with assembling this material into a quilt or banner, your students can display it in your classroom or elsewhere in your school.
Suggested Student Assessment:
Conduct a class discussion in which cultural detective teams ask classmates to make generalizations about their cultural celebration quilts or banners. What judgments about specific cultural patterns and landscape features are the classmates able to make on the basis of what's included? Did they use inductive and deductive reasoning?
Donna Laroche of Winn Brook Elementary School in Belmont, Massachusetts, contributed classroom ideas for Standard 10. Related Links:
| 
Check out:
