While researching and student teaching this week I've come across a few websites and sources that I could see myself using, on a regular basis to help students connect and understand different ways of life and cultures. First, while student teaching, a fellow teacher showed her class a website called gapminder.org. This website shows different income and quality of life of different families from different parts of the world. It allows you to look at different homes either by how much the family makes a month and/or country. You can also look up death rate, birth rates, and other statistics, and compare different countries and see how their statistics have grown or decreased throughout the years. It was helpful to students as they were able to see that not everyone in the world lives like we do (or their fellow classmates, in Kirkland WA). They saw how little people made, how they did or didn't have running water and electricity and then made assumptions based on the pictures they saw statistics or facts that went along with differing countries and family units around the world.
To maintain a global perspective, I liked the idea of having a pen pal in the 21st century, from our readings this week. Students could learn about the differences of everyday life between their country and the country of their pen pal on gapminder and then ask questions and learn first hand information from someone who lives in the country everyday, someone that might find our way of life different or confusing.
To complete the unit regarding a global perspective, students could find time to skype with their pen pal so they can talk person to person and see each other's classrooms. This would give them an even better idea of the differences and similarities between themselves and the student they've been corresponding with throughout the unit.
Some other tools I though would help with a global unit to help kids stay connected would be twitter. Having a hashtag they could use and share with their pen pal as another way to communicate with one another. Another way twitter could come in handy is if the students participated in a global read aloud. They could create a class (period or entire grade) hashtag so they could all participate online with the global read aloud. I like the idea of the global read aloud as something the students could choose to do, like a choice novel. They'd have to read one of the novels suggested for the read aloud and comment using a specific hashtag, being sure to note what other classmates are saying about the book as well as, possibly, people around the world. It could almost turn into a very informal, online book club.
Sources:
https://theglobalreadaloud.com/
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/pen-pals-in-21st-century-lisa-mims
https://www.gapminder.org/
To maintain a global perspective, I liked the idea of having a pen pal in the 21st century, from our readings this week. Students could learn about the differences of everyday life between their country and the country of their pen pal on gapminder and then ask questions and learn first hand information from someone who lives in the country everyday, someone that might find our way of life different or confusing.
To complete the unit regarding a global perspective, students could find time to skype with their pen pal so they can talk person to person and see each other's classrooms. This would give them an even better idea of the differences and similarities between themselves and the student they've been corresponding with throughout the unit.
Some other tools I though would help with a global unit to help kids stay connected would be twitter. Having a hashtag they could use and share with their pen pal as another way to communicate with one another. Another way twitter could come in handy is if the students participated in a global read aloud. They could create a class (period or entire grade) hashtag so they could all participate online with the global read aloud. I like the idea of the global read aloud as something the students could choose to do, like a choice novel. They'd have to read one of the novels suggested for the read aloud and comment using a specific hashtag, being sure to note what other classmates are saying about the book as well as, possibly, people around the world. It could almost turn into a very informal, online book club.
Sources:
https://theglobalreadaloud.com/
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/pen-pals-in-21st-century-lisa-mims
https://www.gapminder.org/
