Culture

The method I've been employing is to take a theme and teach English one theme at a time. For example we have done "Family, Hospital and Health, At Home, Things We Do, At School, Sports and Leisure, and Animals." The last lesson was Culture with some Geography.

I don't know if my definition of culture, or concept of it, is precisely accurate. I simply said "Culture is how you do things." Using stick figures on the white board I tried saying it is what makes groups of people similar to each other, and different from other groups. The students brainstormed various aspects of culture including: dress, language, food, art, architecture, music, national treasures, holidays, etc. We looked at some 20 cultures spread across all the continents. The students liked hearing about Yap and seeing the stone money. They liked Spain's siestas, bull fighting, and tomato festival. They liked Mexico's Day of the Dead. They liked seeing food from all over the world. And enjoyed hearing the story about Levi Strauss.

The Geography portion included learning continents, countries, states/provinces, cities/capitals, and geographic features such as mountains, or rivers. The older students made posters of a selected country which are pictured below. The younger students are looking at the posters made by their older classmates.