Intercultural Classroom: Table/ Group Signs

On my quest to incorporate more interculturalism in my core FSL I have created little things and activities to add a cultural component to my classes every week at least.  One thing that I incorporated was group names; and those group names are different Francophone countries.

Each of the groups in my classroom has these frames (Tolsby frame from IKEA) with some information cards in it.  As a group, students would read the cards the first day with their new country, and as a group learn the statistics on the card.  (I changed the countries throughout the year so students get to know more than one.)

Through out the month, I will do different activities with that information.  Two activities my students like the best is the running dictation, and the scavenger hunt.

Running Dictation:

Take the additional stats from the students table country and make several copies. Put the copies up around the walls of the classroom (or even the school building).

Put the students in small groups. Each student has a role: there is the runner, the recorder and the checker.  The aim is for one of the students in each group to walk to read the passage on the wall. They remember some of the facts and walk back to their group. They quietly dictate what they remembered to their partner, who writes it down. They pass it to the checker to look for errors. Each trip to the wall must be done by a different student than the previous turn.  Over several turns they will build the page of information. This means they really do have to run back and forth because students will only remember three or four words at a time.

The winning group is the team that finishes first - although you need to check for mistakes (Or have a judge/ judges with the fact sheet to look for errors!). If there are mistakes, they must keep walking to check!  It is a great reading activity-- it gets students to think about the structure of the sentence to try and remember more and more of the information.  

Scavenger Hunt:

I hide additional facts about the countries around the room (or school) and students have to collect the additional facts about their country.  They know it is a fact about their country because I have the flag for the country on each fact.  Students go in pairs or groups to collect the facts around the school.  The first group to find all 5-10 facts, wins. (I made a trophy for the groups that win. Each time we do a group activity, that's what the "countries" win.)  

Sometimes the activities are smaller, like this one: I have the students look up a house in their group's country.  Draw a house from that place (for example Senegal) and a house from your neighbourhood.  Some students label parts of the house, others list differences-- it all depends on the the students abilities.  That comparison is really important in intercultural understanding- it is important to humanize the "other" so that we can see the similarities in contrast with the differences.  These are successful activities too.  

In order for the students to win at these games, they have to be at least a little familiar with the information on their table.  It's not a big cultural focus, but its a good way of incorporating la Francophonie into my classroom.  

In case you want to try this out, here are the cards I made for you to print out and use.  Please let me know of other activity ideas you use them for!  (They are double sided for use in the TOLSBY frames.)

**The link for these cards is also added to the printables page, for easy sharing.