Friday, October 6, 2017

Culture, Day 1 - Class Recap

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 15: I can explain how culture both reflects and shapes society.

Soundtrack: "Food" by Common and Kanye West. Selected because we talked about what we had for breakfast today, as a part of our culture. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 10/6/17:
Grades/News Brief – Arno
What is Culture?
The Lost Boys
Our Culture

Homework: Read the blog. Make sure you have all of your Geography unit work turned in if you haven't turned it in already! Next news brief: Dahson.

News Brief: Before the news brief today, I passed back the grades from the Geography unit (record turnaround on them for me!) and explained why I gave what I did. Then, Arno brought in an article about this story for the news brief: TheGuardian.com - Man shot dead by French army after killing two people at Marseille train station. We found France in the world map packet and talked about what happened with this story for a bit, before moving on. Thanks, Arno. Dahson was assigned to do the next news brief.

We also watched the one minute BBC World News update. Here's the link to see the latest one minute update, at any time of day (it will probably be different from what we watched in class):


I also asked about the upcoming weekend and had a good time hearing what students were up to, before we moved on.

What is Culture?: I started this section and new unit by asking what everyone had for breakfast today. The answers were:

Nothing x 15
Popcorn
Sandwich
Hashbrowns
Cereal x 4
Waffles x 3
Pastry x 3
Eggs x 2
Ramen
Tortilla
Almonds

I saw this article a while ago 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 (most students did this in Google Classroom using their Chromebooks):


After that, we went through this slideshow of pictures from the National Geographic Photography: Culture website. As we went through, we brainstormed as a class all the different aspects that could go in the second box, of 10 characteristics of culture. 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. We only went through the first 14 in class today, so don't skip ahead and do the rest, yet!

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.

Our Culture: We didn't have the time at the end of class to dive into this, so I ended it here. Next time, we will finish the photo slides and continue introducing culture. Have a great weekend!

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