Global+Cultural+Awareness+Lesson+Plan

//**Global Cultural Awareness Lesson Plan ** // // For this assignment, we were required to develop and design a lesson plan on the topic of global or cultural awareness. In the lesson, I addressed a real world experience, relationships, by teaching students multi-cultural awareness and by focusing on everyone has a culture therefore everyone is different. Throughout this lesson students were engaged collaboratively in the learning process. Through the exchange of several emails, students developed friendships with students in another country. They learned about the differences and commonalities between themselves and their ePals. They also gained cultural awareness by learning about the characteristics of their ePals, their traditions and the environment of another part of the world. Students were also encouraged to learn independently by spending free time at a class resources center that included books, maps, photos, artifacts and viewing websites about their ePals’ country. For the final assignment, students created presentations about their ePals and themselves reflecting a greater understanding of the similarities and differences among cultures, lives, and environments. // || // In order to determine my topic, I first searched through the weekly required readings. // //Next, I looked through the lesson plans to find out what the teacher wanted me to teach, while she was out on short term leave. The students were in second grade and had just started communicating with their ePals. Therefore, I thought a good way to teach them about global awareness was to incorporate it into their activities with their ePals. I started the unit by engaging the students by providing them the opportunity to look at photos, maps, artifacts and read books about their ePals country. In order to help them better understand what it means to be a good ePal or pen pal we read “Dear Mr. Blueberry by Simon James.” Students exchanged four emails with ePals. They exchanged information about their daily lives, their environment, and culture. This topic was relevant for me because it provided students with an innovative opportunity to learn about real world experiences while building friendships with students from another country and it was a fun way to learn about global perspectives.// || //As an educator in the 21st century, I have a great responsibility to my students to help prepare them to be productive citizens in a global world. In addition, I must help them develop a global awareness so that they can learn and work collaboratively with students from other cultures as well as other parts of the world. Therefore, we must continue using technology to communicate, assemble and analyze information based on the demands of a changing society. As a teacher, I should be focusing more on enhancing teaching and learning using 21st century strategies. I must create opportunities in my classroom for students to interact globally with each other in genuine learning experiences providing connections that are significant to developing their attitudes, motivation, and engagement toward learning. Today’s classrooms should not look like the classrooms I grew up in. Our classrooms should be a reflection of the global technological environments that students immerse themselves in on a daily basis. // ||
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 * [[file:C.WatersGlobalAwarenessLessonTemplate.doc]] ||
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