Exploring+Culture

** Exploring Culture **

**HUMAN CULTURE**

We started our unit by brainstorming a list of characteristics of different cultures. []

Next, we compared two pictures and looked for the culture is each one. What is different? What is similar?

We did a writing activity where we imagined that we were raised by wolves. What would be different about ourselves and how people looked at us? Our group conclusion was this; we need culture to be Human. We learn from Culture. Without culture, are we still Human? Big questions and big ideas.....

We wrote a recipe to make a human for an imaginary alien. If an alien wanted to make a human like us, what would they need? Prepare a recipe.

Finally, we imagined that our lives were different.

**NATIONAL CULTURE**

To start our look at National Culture, we talked about Maps and then did a scavenger hunt on GoogleMaps. media type="googlemap" key="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=209094041254093226688.0004bd38271d5f4bed85c&hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=14.312373,38.143158&spn=82.87504,297.07306&output=embed" width="425" height="350"

Next, we decided on which countries we would do for our research project. We are going to compare our home country to a different country, and look for similarities and differences. [|Korea and Australia] [|Japan and Ghana] [|Japan and Italy] [|Mexico and Greece] [|Pakistan and France] [|Japan and Iceland]

**Cultural Dance Project** We researched the origin and purpose of various dances from around the world. We shared our information in a [|GoogleDoc]. Next, we had to prepare a short speech and then do the dance for the class! We were risk-takers and tried something new!

[|Irish Step Dance] [|Inuit Drum Dance] [|Cossack Dance] [|Maori Haka] [|Hawaiian Hula Dance] [|Maasai Adumu]

**Collectivist Culture** Koichi - I think that it is a group, like families, communities, teams, etc. It is like mentioning the whole thing, or answering a question looking at the whole thing. For example, if you look at a picture of a fish swimming, if you say something like aquarium, or river; your saying that with a collectivist answer. You're seeing the whole picture and describing the whole thing. Jiwon -

**Individualist Culture** Koichi - I think that this means individual or like "I" meaning. This is like working individually and not as a group, and caring about yourself first. It is like focusing on the thing in front of you, and not the whole picture. Jiwon -

**Cultural Differences** We wrote a short skit about a conflict between a collectivitsic society and a individualistic society. Then we recorded it, and wrote a reflection in the comments on the Youtube video. [|Jiwon, Naana, Isha] [|Koichi, Satoki, Emi]

**LOCAL CULTURE**

We studie how different countries and cultures have many subcultures within in, and those subcultures are regional and local. We each chose a country and researched different parts of the culture. Each part is similar to the other, but slightly different. Like, in Japan, everybody eats Kamaboko, but everybody eats it differently. The same with how we think. Some people think a certain way, but others think slightly different.

We made a news report about this. We wanted to make a green screen and then edit a picture of the place behind us. However, we learned that making green screen movies is not easy! We tried it, but it looked terrible. Our set up was wrong, the camera angle was wrong, and the sheet was too dark. Next time, we will get it right. We decided that we would leave it like it is, as a reminder to our failed attempt. We will not fail next time.

[|Jiwon in Northern Italy] [|Koichi in Southern Italy] [|Satoki in Northern Thailand] [|Emi in Southern Thailand] [|Naana in Northern New Zealand] [|Isha in Southern New Zealand]