Standards:

1.      Culture & Cultural Diversity

Performance Expectations:

a.   Analyze and explain the ways groups, societies, and cultures address human needs and concerns
f.    interpret patterns of behavior reflecting values and attitudes that contribute or pose     obstacles to cross-cultural understanding

Results:

1.      The students will be able to describe the various belief systems (religion), values, traditions, language, and political systems of several different countries of the world.

2.      The students will be able to compare and contrast different societies and cultures.

3.      The students will be able to critically examine different events in world history from various cultural perspectives and answer essential questions about motives of different cultures involved with these events.

Evaluation:

            The students will work in groups and each group will be responsible for presenting information to the class on an assigned cultural group or country. In this presentation they must include information about the belief systems, values, traditions, language, and political systems of their assigned country.

            After the presentations are given, the class will discuss several different events in World History and examine them from the perspective of various cultural groups and countries. Individually, students will be responsible for writing a paper on a specific world event and discuss that event from one cultural perspective.

            After the unit, each student will take a test on the cultural groups and world events discussed.

Curriculum:

            This lesson plan would fit well into an 12th grade World Geography class or a World History class.

Instruction:

10-14 days

1.      The instructor will break the class up into five groups and assign them a presentation topic of India/Hinduism, Middle East/Islam, Middle East/Judaism, and Western World/Christianity. It is assumed that the class has spent some time before the lesson studying these various cultures.

2.      The instructor will explain that each group is responsible for teaching the class about their assigned culture’s belief systems, values, traditions, language, and political systems. The students may use posters, lecture, video, activity, PowerPoint, role-playing, or other teaching methods as approved by the instructor in order to present their information to the class effectively. Each group must fill up a 45-minute class period with their presentation. They are also responsible for holding a ten to fifteen minute class discussion at the end where they must ask the class 3-5 critical questions and must also answer questions from their classmates. Each student must ask at least one question during another group’s presentation in order to earn participation points for the assignment.

3.      The instructor will give one to two class periods as needed dedicated to group work for the presentations. The instructor will check in with each group a couple of times to make sure the instructions are clear and that progress is being made. Ideally, the students would have a weekend or more to have outside class time to work on their presentations.

4.      Five class periods will be spent on each group’s presentations.

5.      On the next day, the teacher will lead a class discussion or engage the students in a Fishbowl Discussion that will compare and contrast the different cultures. Each student will be given ten minutes at the end of class to complete a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting two of the cultures discussed in class that they did NOT present on.

6.      On the next day, the teacher will present information to the students on several events in World History that involved the five cultures. These events will be the fight for Indian independence from Great Britain in 1947, the Six Day War between Israel and the Arab nations of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and the War in Iraq. The instructor will then assign further reading for homework to ensure comprehension of these events.

7.      The next day, the students will be split into 7 groups and assigned an event and a perspective: Indian Independence/Britain, Indian Independence/India, Six Day War/Israel, Six Day War/Arab Nations, Iraq/Sunnis, Iraq/Shiites, and Iraq/United States. The class period will be spent in groups discussing and researching the event from the assigned perspective. Instructor will again check in on the progress and understanding of each group.

8.      The students will be assigned a 3-5 page paper describing their event from their assigned perspective, discussing motives and opinions, and explaining why those motives and opinions exist. Ideally the students will have a week or so outside of class to work on this paper.

9.      At the end of the unit, the students will be given a multiple choice and short answer test on the cultures and events discussed in the lesson.

Discussion Questions:

1.      What key elements of society make up its culture?

2.      How do these key elements influence the actions, perspective, motives, and opinions of a culture?

3.      How is our culture different than the culture of the Middle East? How has this affected current events and world politics?

4.      What would your opinions of the United States if you lived in the Middle East? Do all Middle Eastern citizens feel the same way?

5.      What is your opinion of people from the Middle East? Do all Americans feel the same way as you? Why or Why Not?