Culture, Day 5 - Class Recap

On the football field at Westview, later this past summer. Athletic events are a big part of Westview culture!

Hi everyone,

We continued learning about culture today and I enjoyed hearing the Nacirema stories students came up with, as well as beginning the Time For School series of videos. Here's the recap for today:

Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 15: I can explain how culture both reflects and shapes society.
Behavior LT 1:  I can manage my responsibilities as a student.

Soundtrack: "Represent" by Weezer. Selected for today because we were talking about how people in different cultures represent themselves. This was also a pump up song for the 2010 World Cup. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 10/20/16:
News Brief – Alexander C.
Culture Project
Exchange Student Questions
Time for School

Homework: Read the blog. Turn in missing/incomplete geography work ASAP. Start working on your Culture Project! Next news brief: Isaac.

News Brief: Alexander C. had the news brief today and talked about this story with the class: CNN.com - Mosul: Most intense day of fighting since offensive began. We found the Iraq on our world maps (in Egypt) and talked about the ongoing battle to defeat ISIS in Mosul. Thanks, Alexander C! Isaac volunteered to do the next news brief.

We also watched the one minute BBC World News update. Here's the link to see the latest one minute update, at any time of day (it will probably be different from what we watched in class):

BBCNews.com - One-minute World News

Finally, we checked in about the upcoming weekend, and anything else that was happening, as well.

Culture Project: This is one of the main assignments for the culture unit, and I hope it is interesting for students to work on! There are a lot of options of what to do - it could be writing, a visual, a presentation, or something else. I'm really interested in learning more about your own culture, and I hope that you are able to learn more about your own culture, too. Here's the assignment:

Google Drive - Culture Project Assignment

This will be due in class on Tuesday, November 1, so be working on it at home, bring work into class to do, and ask questions if you need help! Talk with me if you are thinking about doing something in the "Other" category!

Exchange Student Presentations: In preparation for our next class, when some of Westview's exchange students are scheduled to be visiting us, I had students write at least two questions they might be interested in having the exchange students answer about their culture (surface or deep). Keep these for next week, please!

Time For School: I really like this documentary as part of our unit on culture, because it is especially interesting to me to see how school and education is a part of different cultures around the world. Here was the handout that I gave to students to fill out as we were watching:

Google Drive - Time For School Documentary Handout

Again, the point to this was to analyze how we see surface culture and what deeper culture is like in different areas around the world.

We finished this video today, if you missed class and need to catch up, or simply want to review it again:

PBS.org - Time For School 2003-2016

I hope you found this interesting and engaging! See you next week! :-)