Where We Are in Place and Time

    This unit focused on the Central Idea: Cross cultural exchange impacts society. The unit started off with a discussion about what makes up culture, and then students looked at different cultures from countries across the world. They looked up traditional foods, sports, holidays, religions, and other cultural aspects. Once this was done they looked up how the country is now and contrasted what they found with the traditional culture of that country. (For example, the traditional food was ______ , but the most popular restaurant in the capital now is a pizza shop.) This was their introduction to how cultures are influenced and changed by contact with other cultures.

The focus then moved on to language. Students researched common English words and looked at what language those words originally came from. They then looked at Japanese words written in katakana. Katakana shows the word wasn't originally Japanese, but many words are not obviously English or any recognizable language. (For example, the Japanese word for stapler is "ホチキス" , pronounced hochikisu. After researching the word students found out the Hotchkiss company first introduced staplers to Japan.) They next looked at Japanese words that have made it into the English language and which sorts of words have entered English the most.

Next the students focused on Manga and Anime, which are two big sources of cultural exchange from Japan to the world. They looked at the history of both, including how they started, the most popular ones historically, and their influence on other countries. 

To sum everything up, students created their own cultures / countries independently from each other. They created traditional dress, food, art, holidays, religions, and other aspects of culture. They created maps of their country, flags, and government. They made posters introducing their country. Once the posters were all up, they saw each other's countries for the first time. They went around and read everything carefully and chose an aspect of each culture that they liked the most. They then chose two of these that they would like to incorporate into the culture they had created. They made a mini poster explaining why those things had been chosen.