Saturday, April 18, 2015

Culture in 3 Acts: Semana Santa

I started rethinking some of my cultural lessons after a colleague presented about Three Act Mathematical Stories. After getting back from break I applied the concept to a cultural lesson about Semana Santa.

My main goal was to create a very student-driven exploration of culture. The ACTFL standards ask students to explore the connections between products, practices, and perspectives of the target culture, but it's often up to the teacher to select which products, practices, and perspectives to focus on. With a large range of options, how do we choose which are most relevant and important to share with our students? One option is to let students direct the focus of those explorations. Here's how that worked out in my classes this week.

Here's a copy of the guided notes I used with my class during this assignment.