Intentional Teaching On Cultural Diversity

[saenudomsuk]

Hi, I have problem to answer this question, can anyone help me on this? Thanks!

Question:

The use of intentional teaching allows practitioners to challenge ans extend children's thinking by making learning explicit and actively scaffolding existing skills and knowlegge.

Working in small groups you are required to plan an intentional teaching experience that focuses on an aspect of cultural diversity. Your experience must show evidence that you draw on and challenge children's existing knowledge.

Your plan should include:
1. An outline of the experience - what it is & how you would introduce it
2. Resources required
3. What the children will learn
4. How it will build on/ challenge their existing knowledge

[fchaudari76]

What age group of children is this with?
If it was myself the experience would be different if I was addressing a group of 3 year olds compared to 5 year olds.

Cultural Diversity can be addressed in the classroom in many ways. In my Montessori classroom we regularly had talks about different people from different countries. Looking at books with pictures of people from different countries & what they wore & the houses they lived in was something we did almost weekly.

I had the children make & taste food from other countries and also we learnt basic phrases/numbers in various languages.
The children (2.5 - 4) gradually understood that there are different people who may not look like them or live like them or speak like them but they were people and they were to be respected no matter what.

Australia is very multicultural, which is good as children grow up with children from diverse backgrounds which in itself is a learning experience as they will ask "why does X not look like me?" or "why does X not speak english?"

I have had children ask me why my skin is not white like theirs ! and I always answer all their questions. I took a globe and showed them where I was from and then went on the internet and found pics of children and people from my part of the world and told them why we had darker skin. They found it very interesting and for weeks brought me the globe to point out where I was from bless them

There is a range of things u can do, and there are lots of resources online if you search which can help you.

Good Luck

[Lorina]

Hi saenudomsuk,

Fefe has already come up with a few ideas you can use, some others include:

- Asking parents from different cultural backgrounds to bring clothing from their country for a dress up experience.

- Looking through books and discussing the foods, houses, people etc..

- Taking photos of each of the children and displaying them on the world map including discussion (about where they are from, what they eat, etc).

,
L.A

[fchaudari76]

I was going to suggest dress up too, children love this.

My last centre was good in the fact we celebrated not only Xmas, easter etc but chinese new year and various other popular celebrations from other cultures. It was a good thing for the children as they learnt about other cultures this way too as well as had some fun by doing various related activities