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 Your students represent a diverse set of experiences, upbringings, and cultures. With so many different stories informing who you and your students are as individuals, it’s no wonder the school year is so memorable. Understanding more about the world’s cultures can help build empathy, alongside supporting curiosity. The TrueFlix unit on South America in the Continents category provides students with access to a wealth of information about our southern hemispheric counterpart. There is no shortage of wonder to be found in this continental landmass that contains the world’s largest tropical rainforest (Amazon Rain Forest), the longest mountain chain (Andes Mountains), the highest waterfall (Angel Falls, Venezuela), and the driest desert (Atacama Desert, Chile), but for our students one of the most memorable pieces of information they can explore is that of South America’s people. Seeing what life is like for a person who shares your time zone, but may live hundreds of miles away, can make learning about different cultures more accessible. It’s also a great way to know and understand one another better.
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A Multitude of Media
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Hearing first hand from individuals your age is an engaging and, at times, surprising way to learn about another country or culture. The Kids Around the World website, maintained by the National Peace Corps Association, has several interviews of various children's daily life, their favorite things to do, schooling, and the things they like. At times these interviews reveal foods or cultural celebrations that may be unfamiliar to the reader, offering the opportunity for further exploration. Nineteen countries around the world are represented, each containing interviews with one or more children who live there, in addition to other general information and resources for learning more about the country. Having students interview one another with this set of questions and then sharing the responses of children from other countries would offer many opportunities for discussion about the things that make us the same, the things that make us different, and the things that make us want to learn more. Another great option for connected educators is to connect with a class using Skype in the Classroom from Microsoft in Education. Joining the educator community is free and grants you access to hundreds of lesson ideas and thousands of teachers, learners, and professionals interested in connecting with your classroom through video conferencing. Connecting across time zones takes coordination, but the chance for your students to connect with peers from another part of the country or planet is a meaningful and enduring experience.
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Project Idea
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Celebrating the different cultures represented among your student body can help to support understanding of and sensitivity towards those characteristics that may set an individual’s experiences apart from that of the majority in the classroom. In What the World Eats, author Faith D'Aluisio and photographer Peter Menzel offer insight into different cultures by photographing families from around the world standing with a collection of food items representing what that family eats in a given week. It’s an honest and nonjudgmental look at the similarities and differences of a universal practice, namely eating, as represented across 80 different samples.
Providing students with the opportunity to share stories and artifacts from their heritage can give students a platform to talk about their culture with pride and a sense of expertise. One way to facilitate such an experience is to organize a Cultural Arts celebration in your classroom or throughout your school. Invite students to bring in artifacts that represent their culture, including traditional clothing, music, food or recipes, and images. Invite family members to join or even participate in the event. Take pictures of the students, guests, and displays throughout the event and hang them in a designated area for others to reference throughout the remaining school year.
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We'd Love to Hear From You!
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Have a suggestion for what unit we should cover next? Or have an idea on how we can make this newsletter even better? Whatever it is, we’re looking forward to hearing from you.
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e-news Archive
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Get more tips and tools from our past newsletters
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Matthew's Tip of the Month
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 Any time you invite students to share personal information, whether that take the form of experiences, stories, clothing, food, or traditions, you are also inviting the opportunity for criticism and malice. Establish a culture of respect among students throughout activities such as these, affirming your classroom as a safe place where members learn, explore, discover, and celebrate alongside one another, always seeking to do good. It is important that we continue to advocate for our students as individuals, making the classroom a welcoming community for all involved. In doing so we will raise students who are more curious and more kind, more knowledgeable and more empathetic.
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- Matthew Winner -
Library Media Specialist & TrueFlix Ambassador
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UPCOMING WEBINAR DATES
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Learn more about getting the most out of TrueFlix by attending one of our monthly online training sessions.
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Thursday, November 10, 2016
2:00 to 3:00 pm EST
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Tuesday, January 10, 2017
3:00 to 4:00 pm EST
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Thursday, March 9, 2017
5:00 to 6:00 pm EST
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Related Resources
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Explore countries across the world with Lands and Peoples, complete with interactive atlas, beautiful photographs, and compare and contrast features.
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New TrueFlix Units Now Available!
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Six new physical science units have been added!
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Electricity • The Elements • Energy
Friction • Gravity • Simple Machines
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