II.
Lesson Plan and Activities The Rainforest ArtLink Videoconference
What is culture?
Essential Questions
What are values and how do they help define one’ s culture?
How does the environment affect my partner’ s daily life? How does it affect my own?
What is the connection between my partner’ s environment and my own?
Enduring Understandings
Art is a universal language that can convey cultural norms and values.
Expanding one’ s awareness of other cultures enhances appreciation of the lives of peers living in another country.
One’ s natural environment affects one’ s culture.
Elements of the environment are interconnected and depend on each other for survival.
Activity Description and Important Points Materials
1. Videoconference overview
2. Preparing for the Video conference
To prepare your class, share an overview of what the videoconference includes:
• Welcome: Greeting in both one’ s own and the partners’ native languages, sharing the current time, weather conditions and what one sees outside of the classroom window.
• Display of Partner Art: Students hold up all the pieces of art so each partner student can see his / her piece.
• Back-and-Forth Dialogue: Questions and replies between the students and the artists of the five pieces selected by each partner class. More general( open) questions are explored.
• Cultural Presentation: Each class presents a two minute song or dance from their culture.
• Wrap-up and Farewell
a. Ask for class volunteers to share the information in the opening‘ Welcome’ session( local time, current weather, view outside classroom window). b. With class, review partner’ s art pieces and select 5-10 they would like to examine more closely – ones of particular interest or which are the richest in cultural detail. Try to ensure that at least one piece illustrates the importance of their environment. c. Once selected, brainstorm a list of the questions for each piece to ask the actual artist and / or the whole class. Students refer back to the Partner Art Analysis forms they completed when first examining their partner’ s pieces. Ask“ what,”“ how,”“ why,”“ who” or“ where” questions, rather than ones that only require a“ yes” or“ no” answer. Questions and observations can come from the art, the artist descriptions or both. Include a question touching on the importance of the environment in specific about the rainforest. d. Assign one or two students to display each of the 5-10 selected pieces and to ask the questions. Remind your students that once a question has been answered, anyone may ask follow-up questions or offer observations.
The full set of your partner’ s art pieces with the Artist Description Sheets
The completed set of Partner Art Analysis forms
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