Transcript

One of my favorite activities is another one that's done at the beginning of the year. When the students come in September the classroom is bare, there's nothing is up, therefore they get ownership and get excited about everything that does go up, because they've had something to do with it. We put up the puzzle of the world, piece by piece, which gives us an opportunity to look at the continents and the oceans, then the students have two strings. One to show where they've been born and then also to show where their families or where their moms or dads have been born. That's the criteria for the strings behind me. 

It's been an amazing opportunity throughout the year whenever we're reading books about other countries, when we're studying communities around the world, when we're studying celebrations around the world, when we're looking at why so many people have chosen North America. The strings are a real visual about how their families have chosen to move to North America, and that there's a commonality that they develop, the students do, there's a similarity. "I didn't realize that your dad was born in Korea as well." And what I've loved about it mostly, is that I learn a whole lot about their families and backgrounds and their cultures. And it's shared throughout the year and referred to regularly. 

The community where I teach, the children have come and their parents have come from all over the world, and this is a wonderful reminder visually, as well as an instructional tool, for us to understand about that, and it provides students with commonality. They recognize that there are people that are from the same countries that they are from and we talk about that in the course of celebrations throughout the year and we can refer back to this in the course of news events that have occurred throughout the year. It's a great visual in the room, but I find that I am referring back to it often.