Sharing Our Family Histories

As students study culture, and begin to learn about cultures from around the world and through time, it is important for them to understand their own culture and to become aware of their assumptions about how the world is as viewed through that lens... And so, we take a bit of time to learn of our own families and our community, and to share that history in class. Students tell of where their families came from, what brought them to this region, what keeps them here, and most share some object or story or tradition that is meaningful in their family.

Brazil!

Studying Brazil and Brazilian culture and history began with a bit of time to listen to some popular music from that country. Here is a sample of what we heard in class:

And, listening to that made it really important that we all get up and dance!

Sharing Our Family Stories

We begin our study of social studies with some work to help us all understand what we mean when we talk about "culture." While we are learning about other people and other cultures from around the world, and throughout time, it is important to understand that we are each the product of our own cultures -- learned from those who make up our families and our communities. Students shared family recipes, handmade quilts, timelines of important happenings in their families, lockets, war medals, and lots and lots of stories. Sharing our stories gives us an opportunity to know ourselves, and each other better.

Ramadan Awareness

We will focus on cultures around the globe this year, and as our year draws to a close, we will hold the 6th grade International Festival with an intent emphasis on nations around the world that have large Islamic populations. With that in mind, I would offer for our consideration and awareness that the Islamic observance of Ramadan began on September 1, and will continue throughout the month. If you and your family are interested in knowing more about this Islamic religious observance, try this link: Ramadan Awareness As we come to the end of the month, we will also encounter the Jewish observance of Rosh Hashanah. It is a season during which we can encounter and appreciate elements of culture that are different from our own.

Studying Graphing and Culture

We've been busy these last couple of weeks.

We've begun our mathematics studies with data and graphs and so we needed to collect some real data to work with. One of the ways students did that was to get busy and measure things about themselves -- things like the circumference of their heads and the span of their arms for instance. They then took this data and used it to make a whole series of different graphs which were presented to the class. That same data will be used again in a few days when we consider measures of central tendency as we calculate mean, median, mode, and range. Look:

Studying culture began, for us, with a look at the "family" culture that we all come from. So, students brought in special items or stories or traditions or timelines from their families to share with the class. This gave us a sense of how our own "culture" has been passed on to each of us from parents and grandparents and great grandparents. In sharing, we came to appreciate the diversity of our community and to also understand some of the things that we share in common. We saw special quilts and baptismal gowns. We heard the histories of families descended from artists and kings and warriors. We got to listen to a taped interview with a grandparent and we saw wonderful old newspaper articles and photographs and cookbooks -- just to mention a few of the treasured gifts that were shared during this first month. We even learned about the Tucker Automobile and the radio made especially for it. A few of the moments that were shared in our classroom: