Part of my family's culture is attending Oregon Duck football games (well, maybe not so much for my sister). This is us outside the 2011 BCS National Championship Game in Arizona.
Hi everyone,
Today, we moved on to a new unit: Culture! What an interesting topic. Culture defines who we are, yet we shape and create it every day! Here's what happened today in class (we did a lot, so be ready for a fair amount of reading):
Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 16: I can explain how culture both reflects and shapes society.
Soundtrack: "Speak Life" by TobyMac. Selected because Jocelyn wrote a very thorough and well reasoned comment in asking me to play it. Thank you, Jocelyn! The lyrics for the song are here.
AGENDA 10/9/14:
News Brief – Matt
What is Culture?
The Lost Boys
Iceberg Reading
Homework: Read the blog. Turn in any late/missing work (will not be reflected on progress report grade). Next news brief: Takumi.
News Brief: Matt brought in an article about this story for the news brief: NBCNews.com - ISIS Imitators Discussed Attacks on U.S. Targets in Canada. We talked about this for a little bit, but since I have your world maps still to grade, we did not go find and highlight Canada. Hopefully, you know where it is already! Takumi volunteered to do the next news brief.
What is Culture?: I started this section and new unit by asking what everyone had for breakfast today. The answers were:
- Nothing (13)
- Cereal (6)
- Toast (4)
- Fruit (3)
- Waffles (2)
- Bagel (2)
- Sandwich (1)
- Yogurt (1)
- Protein bar (1)
- McGriddle (1)
I saw this article last night and thought it was interesting, which is why I asked:
We looked at a few of these different types of breakfast (all of which were certainly better than "nothing" as the high answer - you need to eat before school, everyone!) and identified "food" as an aspect of culture. Then, I passed out this sheet:
I had students guess about what culture is with the top space on the worksheet, then we brainstormed as a class all the different aspects that could go in the second box, of 10 characteristics of culture.
After that, we went through this slideshow of pictures from the National Geographic Photography: Culture website. Here are the photos we went through:
I love all of these pictures because the world is such a diverse and interesting place! I enjoyed the class guesses as to what was going on in each.
The Lost Boys: Next, I showed part of a documentary on The Lost Boys of Sudan. This shows the dramatic differences between the culture in Sudan and the culture in America - something I think we do not think much about at all.
As a counterbalance, I showed this commercial that was made about Lopez Lomong, who was one of the "Lost Boys" and who eventually gained American citizenship, made the US Olympic Team, and carried the American flag into the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing:
I showed these videos to highlight some key aspects to American and Sudanese culture. We will continue to explore cultural similarities and differences of various different cultures during this unit.
Iceberg Reading: Near the end of class, we started going through this reading about culture (which apparently, the substitute started with the class while I was out):
We talked about some more aspects of culture, including the fact that the American school system is obsessed with time and being on time, whereas in other cultures, time is something that is more of a relative concept.
To end class, I showed this video compilation of various people around the world dancing to "Happy" by Pharrell Williams. This was to highlight a similarity of cultures: dancing!
This ended the class for the day. See you next week! Enjoy the long weekend!
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