In an upcoming unit I will be addressing a social studies goal that discusses how individuals, families, and groups of people are similar and different. The school I work for has little diversity. The student body is predominantly white, with small populations of Hispanic, Hmong, and African American students. Therefore this unit is of importance, as students need to recognize and understand that people have both similarities and differences.
As an introduction to the unit I would show a segment of "People Have Similarities and Differences."
Conversely, I could begin the unit with a brainstorming session, using the students' ideas to list both similarities and differences among the themselves and their peers. The video segment could then be shown to continue the discussion, and elicit new ideas.
This segment is part of an entire video on the similarities, differences, and cultures of students. Rather than showing the entire video throughout the unit, I believe the students would gain more understanding of themselves and their peers if they were able to create a class video segment. This clip from video would be a good example for the students to follow. The class video would be the culminating activity for the entire unit.
This project, inspired by the Discovery Education video segment, would both engage students in their own learning and inspire them to learn more about others around them.
Center for Educational Resources. (1999).
People Have Similarities and Differences [Video Segment]. Available from http://www.discoveryeducation.com/
Great idea. When you are having the students work through the similarities and differences a concept mapping tool like MindMeister might be a useful tool. For production of their own videos there are a ton of resources. One that I discovered recently is PhotoPeach. Easy to use and the students can embed their own quiz questions throughout their video.
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