Seventeen students were registered for World Cultures Club on Monday. Twenty-one students showed up, with more at the door thirty minutes later whom I didn't admit. Punctuality is important to me and in my culture, I explained, and if they wanted to take part in our activities they must be on time. It was an excellent example for everyone present and they all nodded vehemently.
I started the class with the played-out "Find Someone Who..." bingo activity. The Ethiopian students had never done anything like it before, though, and even when the first student managed to get all twenty-five signatures, the others wanted to continue to mingle and finish their sheets. When I had finally herded them back inside the ELIC, I debriefed the activity, asked who had signed for what. The squares had been cultural factoids, like "Someone born outside of Hossana," "Someone who speaks three or more languages," and "Someone who is Orthodox" etc. We discussed the definition of culture and made two flip charts (one per table) on what culture means. To review this next session, I'm going to have each table create their own poster together of what culture is.
Afterwards, we did another fun activity I actually got off of my Pinterest Account (see? It's not just a time-waster!) called "Namebows."
Don't judge my adjectives. Were I in America, I would never model with the word "Nice," but in Ethiopia they're still grasping the language and I wanted to use adjectives I was sure they knew. My two that I was taking a risk on was "Resourceful" and "Idealistic."
At first, the students understood the concept that each word had to begin with the letter in their name. What they weren't quite grasping was the idea that it had to be adjectives. I had all sorts of interesting words, like "Zinc" for Z (from a natural sciences major, no less) or "General," for G - that was a common one. But with some tweaking, reiterating, and using gobez student examples, I was able to help them make their namebows.
I had hoped the students would cut their own cloud out, but they preferred not to, so many of them looked like this:
Still, they seemed happy enough with them. And I was so proud, I took them all outside to get a photo of all of us holding our namebows to commemorate the first session of World Cultures Club.
I have one more photo with me with the students. But my internet's not cooperating or letting me upload, so this one without me will have to do. After all, it's about the kids anyway, not me, right?
Next time on Ferengi No Habesha? An update on my read-aloud program! See you then!
I started the class with the played-out "Find Someone Who..." bingo activity. The Ethiopian students had never done anything like it before, though, and even when the first student managed to get all twenty-five signatures, the others wanted to continue to mingle and finish their sheets. When I had finally herded them back inside the ELIC, I debriefed the activity, asked who had signed for what. The squares had been cultural factoids, like "Someone born outside of Hossana," "Someone who speaks three or more languages," and "Someone who is Orthodox" etc. We discussed the definition of culture and made two flip charts (one per table) on what culture means. To review this next session, I'm going to have each table create their own poster together of what culture is.
Afterwards, we did another fun activity I actually got off of my Pinterest Account (see? It's not just a time-waster!) called "Namebows."
Don't judge my adjectives. Were I in America, I would never model with the word "Nice," but in Ethiopia they're still grasping the language and I wanted to use adjectives I was sure they knew. My two that I was taking a risk on was "Resourceful" and "Idealistic."
At first, the students understood the concept that each word had to begin with the letter in their name. What they weren't quite grasping was the idea that it had to be adjectives. I had all sorts of interesting words, like "Zinc" for Z (from a natural sciences major, no less) or "General," for G - that was a common one. But with some tweaking, reiterating, and using gobez student examples, I was able to help them make their namebows.
I had hoped the students would cut their own cloud out, but they preferred not to, so many of them looked like this:
Still, they seemed happy enough with them. And I was so proud, I took them all outside to get a photo of all of us holding our namebows to commemorate the first session of World Cultures Club.
I have one more photo with me with the students. But my internet's not cooperating or letting me upload, so this one without me will have to do. After all, it's about the kids anyway, not me, right?
Next time on Ferengi No Habesha? An update on my read-aloud program! See you then!
Hi Carlin - Lost my comment in Googleville. Here's the short version again -
ReplyDelete1) Liked your post and the exercises are very clever.
2) If I read your post directly on the email (that is sent automatically) there is no place to comment. I have to switch over to the on-line Google site. Then, after I try to post my comment, I have to log into my Google account (which I happen to have but almost never use)
Tod C
LOL, Tod, you don't have to comment all the time. Thanks a lot for the love and support, though, it's appreciated!
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