Culture, Day 6 - Class Recap

A pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This was right across the street from where my friend Clarke lived for a while. Photo taken in 2011.

Hi everyone,

Today was mostly just spent finishing the fantastic Time for School documentary and thinking more about how education impacts culture. Here's the recap for today:

Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 16: I can explain how culture both reflects and shapes society.

Soundtrack: "Learn to Fly" by Foo Fighters. Selected because of our continuing look at how education impacts culture. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 10/27/14:
News Brief –  Alex W.
Time For School
USA Culturegram
Work Time

Homework: Read the blog. Turn in missing/incomplete geography work ASAP. Fully complete Nacirema and Time for School work. Next news brief: Nouri.

News Brief: Alex W. had the news brief today, and though she initially forgot that news briefs about stories inside the United States are not allowed for this activity, she chose this story to talk about: USAToday.com - Real Madrid rallies back to beat Barcelona in 'El Clasico'. This was about a soccer match in Spain! I also showed this tweet, which looked at election results in Brazil. watched the VICE News "Beyond the Headlines" clip on YouTube before moving on. Nouri, you have the next news brief!

Time For School: We finished Time For School 3 today. If you missed class and the handout, here it is:

Google Drive - Time For School Documentary Handout

Again, the point to this was to analyze how we see surface culture and what deeper culture is like in different areas around the world. If you did not have enough time in class to fully answer the three questions at the end, please do so for homework!

Here are both parts to the documentary. I stopped Part 2 when it was clearly done talking about the students.

PBS.org - Time For School 3 (Part 1) Documentary

PBS.org - Time For School 3 (Part 2) Documentary

Really powerful stuff, especially when the students from Africa were talking about their shared challenge of losing parents and still striving for their education.

Thank you once again for your hard work and understanding. I am truly thankful to be your teacher. See you next class!

Culture, Day 5 - Class Recap

Some of our exchange students here at Westview came to talk with our class today about their experience here and their culture back in their country of origin. This is a photo I took on the football field at Westview, later this past summer.

Hi everyone,

I don't know about you, but I loved hearing our exchange students talk about their experiences today! Here's the recap for today:

Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 16: I can explain how culture both reflects and shapes society.

Soundtrack: "Represent" by Weezer. Selected for today because we were talking about how people in different cultures represent themselves. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 10/23/14:
News Brief – Zachary V.
Exchange Culture
Discussion
Time for School

Homework: Read the blog. Turn in missing/incomplete geography work ASAP. Next news brief: Aiden.

News Brief: Zachary had the news brief today and talked about this story with the class: BBC.com - Ottawa shootings: Soldier killed and city on lockdown. This was a breaking news story, so it will be interesting to follow what happens here. We found Canada on our world maps and then moved on, because I wanted to make sure that we gave plenty of time to our exchange students.

Exchange Culture: We had the privilege of having Geir (from Norway), Laura (from Brazil), and Jerry (from South Korea) come into our class today and present about culture in their countries. They did such a fantastic job! I appreciated your focus and great questions as they talked. It was certainly interesting for me to learn about, too!

Discussion: After the presentations, there was time for general culture questions (made at the end of last class) for Geir, Laura, and Jerry. Again, I thought this was really interesting and cool to see! Thanks for your participation.

Time For School: We did not have time at the end of class to continue this, but we will next class. If you missed class last time and the handout, here it is:

Google Drive - Time For School Documentary Handout

Again, the point to this was to analyze how we see surface culture and what deeper culture is like in different areas around the world.

We got about 34:40 in to the following video, if you missed class and need to catch up, or simply want to review it again:

PBS.org - Time For School 3 (Part 1) Documentary

I hope you are finding this interesting and engaging! Have a great weekend! :-)

Culture, Day 4 - Class Recap

I really like this picture I took of a kid (I have no idea who it is) at Trillium Lake by Mt. Hood, over the summer. Fishing could be a part of his family culture!

Dear class,

I enjoyed hearing some of your Nacirema stories today in class! We also started looking at school as a part of culture, which is something we are going to investigate a lot over the coming days. Here's the recap for today:

Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 16: I can explain how culture both reflects and shapes society.

Soundtrack: "Abc" by Jackson 5. Selected because it relates to the theme of school and culture. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 10/21/14:
News Brief – Tarence
Nacirema Stories
Time for School
Create Questions

Homework: Read the blog. Turn in missing/incomplete geography work ASAP. Next news brief: Zachary V. (and Tarence).

News Brief: Tarence was not in class today, so we did not have a student presented news brief. We did talk about what was happening in the world (including the trip I booked last night to India for Spring Break)! Finally, we talked about anything interesting that happened over the weekend, before watching VICE News "Beyond The Headlines" for today. Thanks, everyone! Zach V, you are up next.

Nacirema Stories: This was homework to complete, so I began class by having students randomly get into seven groups and share your stories to the group members, while trying to guess what the story was about. Then, the group elected the best story from the group to share out to the class as a whole. I really enjoyed hearing these! Please keep the Nacirema stories to turn in as part of a collection of evidence for the Culture unit (like we did for Geography).

Time For School: I really like this documentary as part of our unit on culture, because it is especially interesting to me to see how school is a part of different cultures around the world. Here was the handout that I gave to students to fill out as we were watching:

Google Drive - Time For School Documentary Handout

Again, the point to this was to analyze how we see surface culture and what deeper culture is like in different areas around the world.

We got about 34:50 in to the following video, if you missed class and need to catch up, or simply want to review it again:

PBS.org - Time For School 3 (Part 1) Documentary

I hope you are finding this interesting and engaging! :-)

Create Questions: Finally, at the end of class, we created a few questions for the exchange students who are going to be visiting with us next class and talking about their culture. One is from Brazil (Laura), one is from Norway (Geir), and one is from South Korea (Jerry). I wanted students to think of at least three questions to try to dig beneath the top of the iceberg. Next class, it should be fun to talk with our exchange students! See you then!