t’s a great way to guide students (and teachers) to understand differences in culture and language.
By now, you’re probably understanding culture to mean “A shared set of beliefs, attitudes, and behavior that are characteristic of a particular social group or organization.” The first two “Give it a Try!” activities will help you to understand how your own cultural lens shapes your mentoring and your teaching.
The third activity is a good one to do with your mentee as a way to synthesize and communicate your knowledge about language acquisition, Finally, the fourth activity can be a useful learning experience and demonstration of your cultural competency and critical thinking. Try this last one with a peer or new teacher–the discussions are guaranteed to be fruitful!
ACTIVITY 1: Self-Analysis of Diversity Issues and Implications
ACTIVITY 2: Culture Quilt
Making Culture Quilts is an activity that can be shared within a class of adult learners and with children. The activity is a great way for participants to consider their own cultural backgrounds, share their backgrounds with others, and begin the conversation about culture. A culture quilt can be made from anything–paper is usually the easiest but feel free to get creative here!
The purpose of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to explore your own culture as well as the cultures of the students you teach in order to develop as a culturally responsive teacher. There are three parts to this activity:
- Create your Culture Quilt* and share it with your fellow mentors. A quilt is a large covering stitched together from many smaller pieces of cloth. Similarly, a number of different characteristics define an individual’s culture. Construct your own culture quilt. Each of the sixteen boxes in the grid contains a question related to a specific aspect of culture. Column 1 is your family history; Column 2 is the cultural other; Column 3 is the cultural self–personal; and Column 4 is the cultural self—professional. On a standard piece of poster board, replicate the grid and fill in each square with a symbol (sentence, picture, drawing, poem, etc.) that answers the question with regard to your own life experience.
- Share your Culture Quilt with your students. Then, invite them to create their own individual Culture Quilts with the help of their families. You will need to modify the questions in the fourth column to “Cultural Self – Student. You may also modify other questions to make them more age-appropriate for your students. However, be sure NOT to change the intention of the question. Depending on the ages of your students, you might consider inviting a parent, relative or other caregiver to help the student present the Culture Quilt to the class.
- Reflection & Application. As your students share their Culture Quilts, use the opportunity to actively listen to and learn about them and their cultures. Take notes, if possible. After all your students have shared their Culture Quilts write up your reflections regarding insights you had about your students, the responses from the rest of the class, whether or not and how the assignment influenced the dynamics of your class. You might even want to note things you learned about individual students that surprised you and think through what caused you to be surprised. Finally, reflect upon ways that you might modify your teaching throughout the year in response to the cultural knowledge you have gained about your students.
Here’s a lesson plan for adapting this activity for students:
Activity 3: Phases of Language Acquisition
Review Robertson, K. & Ford, K. (2008). Language acquisition: An overview. This is available on the Colorín Colorado website: http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/26751
This article examines the stages of language acquisition, highlights instructional strategies for each stage and provides readers with recommendations for working with English Language Learners.
Create a matrix to summarize what you’ve learned about language acquisition that identifies the stages of language acquisition. You might wan