Today Bette’s Class
chose Fiji as our culture to study
and teach about for this year’s All School Multicultural Festival. We worked
together to make this decision. It was a dynamic process, and a lot of fun! I
want to share the process with you.
First, we talked
about what “culture” means and the answers were mostly on target: how people
live, their food, government, history, traditions, etc. We also discussed
choosing a general topic, such as climate change or ocean plastic, which are
topics some of our students are interested in.
Next, we passed
out the Atlases and kids worked in pairs to peruse the world! They wrote down
places of interest. Each pair narrowed it down to 5 and we wrote them on a big
piece of paper. As a group, we looked for doubles and also removed any that
were already selected by other classes. People got a chance to speak to some of
the ideas they liked and give reasons.
Time to use the
dots.
We removed any that
obviously did not have enough interest.
Then it was time to go to lunch.
While the class was at lunch, I made a fresh sheet with the
finalists.
Once again, we took turns sharing our thoughts.
Another round of dots.
It was narrowed down to 2 choices: Fiji and Amazon Rainforest.
We voted, and Fiji won.
What a surprise! We’re all very excited. I am working on a google
doc with vetted resources. I will share with you and you can add anything you
may find. Please let us know if you have and knowledge, experience or resources
for learning about Fiji.
Our multicultural festival is an
exciting, community building experience. I will create a curriculum with the
kids to learn about what makes the people of Fiji special- How they are
different and how we are all the same.
