Lesson 1: My Community
September 11-27, 2006
Developed by RI-SOL
Objectives
The objective of this lesson is for students to explore and describe their own community, and to begin to learn about their partner country’s community. This is designed as an introductory activity for the students to get to know each other as their year long collaboration starts. The final product of this lesson will be used as a reference throughout this school year.
Materials
Computers with Internet access
PowerPoint, MS Word
Digital camera or scanner (if not available, students can use photos from the Internet)
Email access to send presentations and participate in forums (not needed for every student, but at least one teacher, student, or administrator address is needed for each school group)
Suggested Procedure
Opening
Explain to the students that we are embarking on a full year of collaboration between US and overseas schools. To start the collaboration, we want the students to explore their own communities and begin to learn about their partner school’s community.
Ask them to think about the word "community". What makes a community? What are some different aspects of communities? Why are communities important? Together, discuss the meaning and come to an agreement on a definition.
Ask students to begin thinking about their own community. What would they want to showcase about their community? What are the most important or interesting aspects of it? What pictures would best describe their community?
Inform students that they will be using a combination of photos and text, to prepare a presentation in PowerPoint (or a web page) describing their community. Explain to them that when they are preparing a presentation, the most important thing is to be aware of the audience, and what information they will want or need. In this case, their audience will be students from another country who don't yet know much about your students’ country. Even the most simple and "boring" things to them will be interesting to their peers abroad.
You can illustrate this by asking them a simple question:
→ Do students in _________ start their day by waking up in a bed, or on cushions on the floor?
Some students may think they know the answer, but ask them how they know: from movies, television, something they read? Are they making an assumption or a generalization? How do they know for sure? Explain to them that this is the value of direct exchange--instead of making assumptions, we can find out what the reality is from the students themselves!
Development
Using a combination of photos and text, student teams from each school will prepare a presentation in PowerPoint (or a web page) describing their community. The students can create the structure and design of the presentations themselves, but they should follow the outlined topics below. There should be at least one page for each topic.
1. Meet our Class: Please provide a photo of the class and the names of students and teachers, the grade and subject of the class. Ask each participating student to include a short bio of themselves – their name and nickname, age, where they live (apartment, house, etc), about their families, favorite hobbies, and what they like best about the community.
2. Where we Live: Please provide location, a map, what type of environment your town is in (desert, coastal area, mountains etc), what kind of weather you have, any significant geological points, population, rural or urban etc.
3. Where we Learn: Please provide information on your school- how many students are there? How many teachers? What grades and subjects are taught there? Is it a private or public school? Is there a mascot? Do you have sports teams or clubs? Is your school known for something special (top sports team, academic decathlon, etc)? Can you provide photos?
4. Our History: Please tell us some of your town history.
5. Our Culture: Please tell us about local traditions, holidays, food, religion, arts and literature etc.
6. What we Do: What are the local industries? Business? Agriculture? Where are most people employed?
7. Our Media: What kinds of local media do you have? Newspapers? T.V? What kind of radio stations?
Encourage students to use photos, links to their favorite websites, compile information in Excel graphs, or use any other computer program to best illustrate their community to students from their partner country.
We ask that each school group create ONE presentation to share with the other schools in the program.
All schools should complete and submit their presentation by Monday, September 19th.
Closing
Teachers should email their class’s presentation or website link to pfarrell@smrhs.org so they can be posted on the website. Presentations should be sent no later than Monday, October 2nd.
Expand the Lesson
Based on their partner schools' results and the information they learned in the chats/forums, student teams can write an article or letter to their local school or community newspaper describing what life is like in their partner country and what they learned from completing this activity. This will provide an opportunity for them to question, analyze, and summarize what their peers' lives are like.
The newspaper articles will also serve as a means to announce the year-long collaboration to the school or community, thereby spreading the benefit of direct exchange with a greater number of students and community members. And don’t forget to send us a copy of the article to pfarrell@smrhs.org!
Students can also pick one aspect of their community, such as Our History and expand more upon it to reflect the direction in which the forum went. For example, if their partner country focused heavily on their community’s history, students should continue to ask more questions and update their presentations the following month.
Teachers can substitute other offline follow-up activities as they see fit--but please keep us informed of how you are expanding the lesson!