Belonging, understanding, and appreciating differences; learning to get along with others.

CONNECTIONS TO MANDATE/MISSION:

Students develop a sense of their own identity and that of other groups; and promote tolerance, understanding, and acceptance as they explore the communities in which they live.

CORE CONCEPTS:

• Change:  how people modify their environment to meet basic needs.
• Conflict:  differences between the conflicts and values of different groups.
• Culture:  customs and values of families from other cultural groups.
• Interdependence:  relationships between members of families and others in the community.
• Perspective:  how people have different values.
• Responsibility:  how we should care for each other.
• Scarcity:  how we should ensure that everyone's needs are met.

During this unit, lesson, or activity, students work individually or in groups:

• make a collage of how people are different using students' drawings and magazine pictures.
• take pictures of classroom activities and share them with pen pals from other places in Florida, the United States, or other countries.
• read or listen to folk tales from different groups and compare and contrast their similarities and differences.
• create picture dictionaries of different languages.
• chart differences of students and write about how being different makes you special.
• create a travel log of different countries using travel brochures obtained from writing to foreign embassies or tourist offices and through the Internet.
• class meetings
• during a unit study of another country - look at differences and similarities between family structures
• interview a persons from different cultures about their families, discuss how living in a new country has been more difficult, or better, than the place they left.
• Create a Venn diagram of themselves and someone from a different culture.

As visitors enter the classroom, they observe the students engaged in activities at various centers around the room.  Two students are working with a parent volunteer responding to a letter received from a pen pal in Mexico.  They are sorting through pictures they have taken in class which reflect many things they do each day, and decide which to send in their letter.

Another group of students is practicing a reader's theater presentation of a folk tale from a different country.On the bulletin board is a travel log and brochures of sites the class has "visited" on the Internet and from information sent to them from people in other places. Some students are marking these places on a map to add to the board. Another group is working with the teacher creating a Venn diagram from lists of similarities and differences between two trade books, finding the themes of caring, belonging, helping the stranger, and how families from different places are alike and different. 

LEARNING ASSESSMENTS:

At the conclusion of units, lessons, or activities students might

• use pictures and photographs to compare likenesses and differences of people, their clothing, what they eat, how they celebrate, etc.
• compare and contrast the values of different groups.
• enhance their skills of writing through communications with pen pals.