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Teaching Idea:
My House
Grade level:
4-10
Objective:
Students will compare their homes to those in foreign countries using the exclusive content and tools found only in your CultureGrams subscription.
National Curriculum Standards
National Standards for Social Studies Culture
- Standard C [Middle Grades]: Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of culture and cultural diversity, so that the learner can explain and give examples of how language, literature, the arts, architecture, other artifacts, traditions, beliefs, values, and behaviors contribute to the development and transmission of culture.
- Standard E [Middle Grades]: Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of culture and cultural diversity, so that the learner can articulate the implications of cultural diversity, as well as cohesion, within and across groups.
Developed by the National Council for the Social Studies
National Standards for Geography | Human Systems
- Standard 10: The geographically informed person knows and understands the characteristics, distributions, and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics.
Developed by the National Council for Geographic Education
McREL Behavioral Studies Standards
- Standard 1: Understands that group and cultural influences contribute to human development, identity, and behavior.
- Level III [Grade 6-8] Benchmark 1: Understands that each culture has distinctive patterns of behavior that are usually practiced by most of the people who grow up in it.
Developed by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning
Time Requirement:
Preparation: 15 minutes
In-class: 1 hour and 30 minutes, two different days
Materials:
- CultureGrams World Edition
- CultureGrams Online Edition—Interviews
Instructions:
- Ask each student to write down their answers to the following questions:
- Ask each student to write a short essay answering the following questions: Describe your home. How many bedrooms does it have? Where do you play or relax? Where do you do your homework?
- Using the image gallery in the Interviews feature, ask each student to access one interview for a person under age 18.
- Ask the students to identify similarities between their own homes and those of the interviewees. What did the interviewees say about their homes that was the same as described in the students' essays about their own homes? Were there significant differences?
- Have each student find the report on the interviewee's home country in the CultureGrams World Edition. Then have them read the Housing section. Was the description in the World Edition report an accurate reflection of the interviewee's home? Were there any differences?
- Ask the students to create a depiction of their home as well as a depiction of what they think a home might look like in the country they researched. You may want to request these in a certain style—as architectural-style design layouts, for example.
- Have the students read other sections of the CultureGrams World Edition report for the interviewee's country, looking for clues as to why homes might be built in this design, out of these materials, etc. Aside from the Housing section, students may also find answers in the Family, Economy, and Land and Climate sections. Have students write short essays describing the factors that influence the type of housing in a country.
How do you use CultureGrams and World Conflicts Today in your school? Submit your teaching ideas to our editors today, and your activity might show up in a future issue of this newsletter.
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