During my 10 week practicum, my Grade 2 students and I explored the meaning culture via studying different countries.

KWL chart: I usually start my units with a KWL chart. I find KWLs useful – I get to collect the puzzle pieces students already have and gives us an opportunity to see where we stand as a class regarding the topic. Here is the KWL for culture:

There were some really interesting questions raised during this activity. I did some research on my own to find out the answers to these students and shared them with the students when we had the time to do so within our lesson.

 

 

 

 

Providing answers to their wonders kept their interest level high throughout the unit and motivated them to generate more questions. In the actual lesson, some of the answers are hidden so the students and take a guess, which makes the process seems like a fun game!

Throughout the unit, we deconstructed the meaning of culture by looking into various cultural factors such as languages, traditional clothes, food, sports, holidays, etc.

Here is a screenshot of one of my SMARTboard lessons:

The students were fascinated to find the differences between each culture. During the discussion period that followed after this activity, students were eagerly talking about their own culture and the times they felt culture around them. More and more curious questions were being raised too. Many of our boys were curious about different sports that were around the world and wanted to learn more about it.

If you are interested in some of the resources I used, click here.