Week 2, Assignment #3

MULTICULTURAL PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

This was quite an interesting project that took place in a multicultural denominator.

BEFORE THE VIDEO:

A pretty textured discussion took place before the video that was focused on:

·       What is television for them

·       According to their experiences, is television a good tool to learn or a good tool to waste time?

·       We used technology (pictures, videos, artwork, guided individual internet searches) to see the evolution of television over time

·       We looked at actual books and digital books we had at school that would refer to this subject and the students had an interesting discussion while choosing the material that I would do a read-aloud with them. One of the groups chose a book (poster size) that was about a boy, named Themo, who was addicted to the television, and as a result he would confuse the TV world with the REAL world.

·       It is a bilingual program (Greek-English), and that’s the reason why you’ll hear some Greek as well.

·       We also focused on the meaning of complex Greek words that are used in English as well…for example: television – “tele” means far in Greek, and more…

DURING THE VIDEO:

·       I explained to them what I was going to share in our read-aloud, and we spoke about the follow up activity: they would have to keep some notes, and then we would create a digital presentation to share with the other groups and parents.

·       We had a great discussion about places that they have visited where their relatives are, and we called that “my other home”. This was a continuation of the conversation that we had before the video took place, which helped me tremendously in learning a lot of information about my the background of my students and some cultural traits that they have noticed in their “other home”, which were different than “our home” – New York. The presentation would have a culminating point, where the students would present and compare the role of the TV in different cultures, using their experiences and their knowledge.

AFTER THE VIDEO:

·       We had a great discussion about the reading.

·       I helped the students fill out the information needed for the digital presentation and then we proceeded on preparing the presentation. Each group prepared a 1-minute presentation and they shared with the other groups. They were eager to share their data and presentations with the parents as well in the class assembly they had at the end of the day.

REFLECTION:

This was a great project where we (teacher and students) got to know each other through this very interesting topic. Cultures and cultural characteristics were unfolding beautifully while we were discussing the role of the TV in different places, cultures, countries, homes. We spoke about how beautiful it is when we have to learn and grow in such a diverse environment, our classroom, our neighborhood, our city, our country. I felt I was fostering respect for the culture and diversity of my students by looking into their cultures, searching and studying their culture and understanding it as we were exploring to find out data about our project. Besides the purpose, this was also able to broaden the knowledge of our students regarding the differences in various cultures.

I was definitely able to use scaffolding instruction as I was motivating them in absorbing knowledge and information by sharing each other’s experiences, trips to other countries/cultures, as well as grasping information and data from the reading and the research we did prior to the reading as well. I was able to facilitate their tasks by assisting them more in the beginning and less towards the end of our project, as most of them gained a pretty good level of confidence and were eager to continue by themselves.

I was able to effectively use scaffolding strategies to create multilevel instruction during this interesting project by primarily planning my lesson in such a way that would serve the purpose. I also left room/time in case other discussion and interest pathways would come up during our research, reading and discussion, and I’m glad I did because there were quite a few subjects (related to our topic) that came up and my students found them interesting to discuss and develop. Customizing your lesson is the key to success always!