World Cultures and Food Level: Secondary --- Content: Social Studies |
Mr. Avellaneda’s secondary school World Cultures class is studying similarities and differences between modern cultures in key areas such as dress, adornment, education, family, food preferences, taboos, etc. To do so they have engaged with classrooms in eight nations through the ePals Web site. Using Schoolmail email accounts through ePals, students have been organized into teams of eight with one representative from each nation. Each week one of the teachers sends out an email prompt to initiate a discussion of one of the key aspects of culture. To explore food preferences and taboos for example, the following email was sent to each student: This week, we’ll be talking about one of a teenager’s favorite topics: food. In your response to this email, address the questions below: What are your favorite foods? Are there foods you would love to try but haven’t had the chance? What foods have you heard of that you can’t believe people actually eat? What foods do you associate with celebrations in your family and community? Imagine that you are responsible for instructing a child on behavior expected at a formal meal. What rules for eating etiquette would you share? Compose your responses to these questions as an essay. Send the completed essay to each of your ePals. Each student read and maintained a file of each response given by their seven ePals. As a culminating activity, each student was assigned one of those ePals as the subject of their final product: A report on the culture of that student based on information gleaned from the series of emails. Each student would play the role of a cultural archeologist, reconstructing the target culture from the series of emails. The resulting report would be assessed in two rounds. First a partner would be asked to assess the accuracy, comprehensiveness and insight of the report into their culture using a rubric that was developed by the students during the course of the project. Each student would then have the opportunity to edit their report and incorporate the partner’s feedback before publishing the emails and the final document to a project blog established on ePals. Tools used in this scenario
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