One great way to launch an inquiry unit on a question like “What is life like for children around the world?” is to show students documentary photographs.
Many of you expressed interest in the posters that the geography group used for their lesson yesterday. In addition to the Hungry Planet and Material World resources, TeachUnicef is a great resource for teaching materials and information about the world’s children and how they live. I’ll bring in UNICEF’s “Country Kit” for Mali so that you can see an example of the resources you can request from the organization.
I thought the geography group did an excellent job with that activity with the posters in the class. It was interesting to be able to compare what other countries around the world have in comparison to ourselves, and to see just how lucky we are. These posters would be an excellent tool to use in a classroom at almost any age when the focus is geography and social studies. I think it would be interesting to have students choose their own countries that they wish to look at and then collecting the posters for that country for the students to use. All in all, there are some pretty neat things that could be done in class with these posters!
I really enjoyed the group that used the big pictures in their lesson plans. As I was looking at the pictures I was very interested in the other groups’ pictures as well. I could have spent so much longer looking and comparing all the different pictures. If I were to use this in my classroom I would make sure to leave the pictures out longer so the students would be able to look at them whenever they had free time. I would then have them journal about some of the differences and similarities they saw. I believe having these resources is very important to have and I will definitely be using them in my future classroom!
I would be happy to bring this to class! Since all of you will be in kindergarten practicum next week, you might have to remind me the following week.
I would love to see the “country kit” for Mali! I really loved the geography activity that we did in class and it would be very interesting to see how the country kit for Mali matches up with your experiences. What things included in the country kit were similar to or different to your experiences? I think this would be really fun for students who come from other countries to do with the class and also very informative. I know I would be really interested in looking at the “country kits” for the different places that I have visited!