Subject: “If
the whole world was a village”
Purpose: I
propose to teach about diversity and how the world is rich because of different
races, religions, languages via with the video link I posted.
Details: This
is a very crucial and important matter for children to learn at earlier ages.
Especially since big cities are increasing becoming multicultural, children
will benefit from knowing how diverse the world is; both in a good way
(different cultures, languages, etc) and a bad way (income disparities,
no-access to schools, girls staying home instead of going to school, etc). I would have the students discuss how this
video makes them feel (A need to know).
Students can first watch the entire video to get familiar
with the world when it comes to continents, languages, religions, education,
income disparities, pollution vs air/water quality, electricity. Then I would
divide them into groups based on these subjects. The driving question for each
of these subjects are to be based on this question: How diverse/rich is our
world? How does your subject contribute to this question? Once the students
start working in their groups, as a teacher I would encourage the students to
research about their topics from different sources. I also would encourage them
to get more familiar about the different tasks related with that topic.
At the end of this process, students are to decide which
of these resources they will use, how they will present and how they will put
all these together as a part of a presentation. Naturally all students in that
group will collaborate, use different kind of sources, benefit from new technologies
and apply their critical thinking into the topic. After all the information is
analyzed, the sources were thoroughly investigated, collaboration between the
students took place; then students need to come up with detailed questions
about the task as well as the driving question. These questions should make the
students aware of the diversity among themselves.
The purpose of this project should be encouraging the
students to appreciate richness in humanity and the teacher should act as an
intermediate person as needed. When each group is ready, teams should present
their projects to the entire class and get the feedback from the other groups
as well as the teacher/teachers. It could be a great idea to present these
works to entire student body on or close to a day that the country celebrates a
national holiday so that students that are different based on their immigration
status, religion, language, etc can get accustomed this idea: “I am a part of
this country and its culture.”
At first students are to define what diversity is and
then identify the list of the tasks they need to work on. Then they need to
describe and group their findings. After this stage, they need to explain why
they choose what they choose, and they need to illustrate examples. Evaluating
and categorizing those findings should be the next step. Once they’re able to
summarize their findings and it is ready to be presented; they can compile the
final product and prepare for the presentation.