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Topic: Children refugee stories

Total learning time: 140

Number of students: 26 students

Description: the students are required to read two stories of refugee children from Syria or other countries involved in wars or terrorism and  watch the map to follow their route from their home country to to the refugee camps,   finally to watch a video. This activity  is aimed to get students know deeper the real situation of these migrants and develop an awareness and empathy towards refugee people. Involve students in discussions that can help them to  form opinions not influneced by racial prejudices. The target group of students are aged 16/17 and their level of English is betweeen B1-B2

Aims

to raise  awareness about the situation of refugee and in particular of children; to learn more about the reason they flee away; to develop in students openmindeness so to overcome prejiudices, empathy towards these refugees so to deal differently with their own classmates coming form not european countries, to accept diversity and consider it a value and not something negative to fight against or build barriers to protect our  well established life model and build  a new model of society.

Outcomes

Affective learning outcomes(Affective learning outcomes):
Knowledge(Knowledge):

Comprehension(Comprehension):

Analysis(Analysis):

Synthesis(Synthesis):

Teaching-Learning activities

Children refugee's stories. Diversity a value!

Investigate                    50 minutes      students         Tutor is not available

Flipped classroom: the students have first received the URL where to find the two stories about the refugee children: at home they have to read and acquire new words linked to the topic, made a map of the lexicon  and prepared a list of points of discussion for the class activity. Teacher is not present in this first step.  They have also to  watch a map on the website where to follow the route of these children's journey.

Read Watch Listen        50 minutes      students         Tutor is available

In classroom  before the discussion activity, the students will watch a video about one of these children: the story of Matiullah, an afaghanistan boy who fleed to UK so they will learn about Taliban and the reason why this boy escaped. they will become more aware and open- minded after wathching and reading these stories and willing to overcome racial prejudices , stereotypes, commonplaces.  After the watching students will be asked comprehension questions  to check their understanding.

Discuss                          20 minutes      students         Tutor is available

The students now are ready to discuss about the situation in Syria, but  the focus is on the  tragedy of children who flee away with their family or sometimes alone and  find after a difficult and  high- risk journey a shelter  in a Lebanon camp or Uk. They have to think over and  talk about children's  feeling when they were in Syria among the bombs, then their emotions after being rescued and how their life changed in the  new country. Then they should talk about their emotions if  they found themselves in a similar situation.

Produce                         50 minutes      students         Tutor is available

Group work : Students are divided in groups of 3 to take different roles, one  student is the   interviewer and the other one is  the refugee child then exchange roles. First they have to prepare  the questions and answers and then dramatize a situation similar to the one of  the children. Another student will film the dramatization.

Read Watch Listen        minutes          students         Tutor is available

the lesson  product will be a film shot by students  during the dramatization stage.

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This experince so useful and necessary to update my professional skills has come to an end with the last step: my Lesson Plan whose title is Children refugee stories . Diversity a value. All the material is from the "The Refugee Children Council" which contains a lot of stories and videos which can help us to better understand the truth about the dramatic situation of refugee.
All the videos with Erika and Alicia, suggestions and questions of each module have been a source of inspiration together with the teachers' posts in Facebook.

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18:30h CEST - Tools and Strategies #DiversityMOOCs TWITTER CHAT Our second live event of the course is the #DiversityMOOCs Twitter chat and it will take place on Thursday, 19th September from 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm CEST (Brussels Time). Twitter Chat Topic: Tools and Strategies in the Cultural Diverse Classroom Thanks to Columbus and many other travellers in past centuries, many foods we now enjoy that once grew only in one place in the world, are now associated with the culture of other countries and have enriched the lives of millions, if not billions. For instance, did you know that over 60 % of the crops now commonly grown originated in the Americas? Where would Italian culture be without tomatoes? Or Swiss culture without chocolate? Other things were first known in Africa or Asia. Where would British culture be without tea? Or Turkish culture without coffee? Isn’t that what diversity is all about? Hasn’t diversity made a  valuable contribution to all of our lives? Where would we be without cultural diversity? At this point in the online course, you have had the opportunity to reflect on intercultural competence and to explore and exchange experiences on what this means in practice on a day-to-day basis. During the twitterchat, we’d like to come together to learn from each other and with one another, and reflect on which tools and strategies can be applied to develop intercultural competences to our learners, especially focussing on the subtopics of Module 2: Everyday teaching practices Experiencing and valuing diversity in the classroom  Building classroom and school identity and community You can find the questions for the Twitter Chat further below. How do I participate? To take part you need to have a Twitter account. If you are new to Twitter check out how to get started on Twitter here, how to set up a twitter profile here and here for some supporting resources to get you started. While not essential for the course, it is recommended to join Twitter in case you haven’t done so. It allows you to communicate with other participants and to share and read additional information about the course. Please add the hashtag #DiversityMOOCs to all the tweets you send. Otherwise the other participants may not find your tweet. Twitter Chat Moderator: Alicia Bankhofer The Twitter chat will be moderated by @aliciabankhofer. At regular times during the discussion she will pose questions. Keep an eye on her tweets during the times of the Twitter Chat. The questions will all be related to the topic of the Twitter discussion. Alicia is one of the course moderators, a language teacher and educational technologist who loves learning and new challenges. Follow her on Twitter for regular updates about her work. What will I do during the Twitter Chat? You will reply to the tweets sent by @aliciabankhofer and by other participants. If there are many participants the discussion can be at a fast speed. Don’t worry if you don’t catch every tweet or if you don’t reply to all the participants of the chat. No one can do that!  See below for the questions that we will be discussing: Q1 In your view how important is developing intercultural competence for learners of all ages in Europe? #DiversityMOOCs Q2 What is your experience in nurturing intercultural competence in your learners? What works well? #DiversityMOOCs #bestpractice Q3 Can you give an example of an everyday teaching practice that you have tried or want to try? Links welcome! #DiversityMOOCs  Q4 What is your favourite digital tool for teaching cultural diversity? Links welcome! #DiversityMOOCs Q5 What digital or analog games or quizzes can be used to build a sense of class community? #DiversityMOOCs Q6 How can you use videos on youtube or other platforms to cultivate intercultural awareness? Examples welcome! #DiversityMOOCs Q7 How can interactive lessons using social media help foster intercultural competence? Links welcome! #DiversityMOOCs Q8 What strategies do you have to deal with conflict in the culturally diverse classroom? Activities? Methods? #DiversityMOOCs Q9 Time is almost up. Any closing comments/questions on the topic of fostering intercultural competence in the classroom? #DiversityMOOCs In the meantime, you can reflect on what is typical for your home country, culture, and research on where this came from.  Further reading: Columbian Exchange on Wikipedia History of Coffee List of spices and their origins

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How to create a sense of belonging to the school community?

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Uploaded by School Education Gateway on 2016-09-06.

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2.4 Creating a sense of
belonging and identity in your class and school. Creating a sense of belonging
and identity in a classroom is a challenge we as teachers face every year or at
least every few years when we stand in front of a new class, regardless of any
cultural diversity. Often we begin this challenge with little knowledge
about our students, group dynamics, and time to dedicate to this important
task. Building community and identity requires a good understanding of our
students and it takes time. But when we have managed to forge a class community
to which all students feel they belong and even have a sense of
loyalty to, it can be a very powerful thing and hugely rewarding
experience for our work as teachers.

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2.4 Creating a sense of
belonging and identity in your class and school. Creating a sense of belonging
and identity in a classroom is a challenge we as teachers face every year or at
least every few years when we stand in front of a new class, regardless of any
cultural diversity. Often we begin this challenge with little knowledge
about our students, group dynamics, and time to dedicate to this important
task. Building community and identity requires a good understanding of our
students and it takes time. But when we have managed to forge a class community
to which all students feel they belong and even have a sense of
loyalty to, it can be a very powerful thing and hugely rewarding
experience for our work as teachers.

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Creating a sense of belonging and identity in a classroom is a challenge we as teachers face every year or at least every few years when we stand in front of a new class, regardless of any cultural diversity. Often we begin this challenge with little knowledge about our students, group dynamics, and time to dedicate to this important task. Building community and identity requires a good understanding of our students and it takes time. But when we have managed to forge a class community to which all students feel they belong and even have a sense of loyalty to, it can be a very powerful thing and hugely rewarding experience for our work as teachers.
In the context of cultural diversity such community building is of particular importance because students feel connected with each other regardless of their differences. This can prevent conflict or creates an environment where conflicts are solved in a positive way by the students themselves.

Do you feel your classes have something like a class identity, a feeling of belonging to a small community? If yes, how did you create this? What about your school? What actions at the level of your school exist that help community building? Do you have colleagues who are more sceptical about such activities when it comes to cultural diversity? How do you convince / deal with them?  Padlet:

I find very important to create a sense of community in our school  and luckily  both headmaster and some teachers are very active with many projects which involve both students and also the territory for example  last year some students taught elderly people how to use the computer or start up being a technological  school is part of a network of schools to make  students create their own business. One of the best product of a start-up experience was made by a boy from Shri-Lanka together with an Italian boy, both of them are my students. Within the classroom framework as Alicia points out it  is very important to create this sense of identity and belonging that can be achieved in many ways creating a close facebook group of the class where to share opinions, ideas and upload materials or a class project , this year my third class will be involved together  with other classes in a multicultural project using comics as a means of communication to deal with this topic and celebrate diversity for example  organizing at Christmas an event where Italian and migrant  students present typical food or read poems and sing.

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Multilingualism - how to support students with different first languages?

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2.1 Example activities to develop students' intercultural competence
To start out with and as a link to the previous module let's look at some concrete activities that you can do with your students in the class. In the video below Erika and Alicia identify some examples they use which might also work for you. Either way, think about how Erika and Alicia are going about the development of intercultural competences in their class and you'll probably notice that much of what they are talking about is related to using innovative pedagogies like project-based or problem-based learning, personalising learning of students, making learning relevant by involving the community.Make sure to apply everything you learned on these courses also in the context of developing intercultural competence of students.  Padlet :
I participated in a Comenius project whose topic was migration with Estonia Portugual, Ireland Germany, France Turkey: each country had  to deal with migration  presenting it in a timeline doing a lot of activities presentation with maps, interactive maps to show the routes of the migration flows, drama activities to represent stories and legends, videos and picture collages and finally an e-book which contained all the works.The students of each country were enthusiastic and eager to know cultural differences, to try new food, to visit the other countries  to experiment diversity. In my opinion Comenius or Erasmus are different experiences from the one we live, every day, in classroom as in the former students are motivated to take part in the project, but in class I have to interest my students in the activities they are engaged with and it’s not so easy. In the first class I’ve invited my students to exchange e-mail to get to know each other and they have found it less boring than the usually routine of introductions and choose topics more concerned with cultural diversity.
Reflections: I'm sure this course will  help me to diversify my lessons, to personalize them with material made by pupils, to stimulate and use their creativity to do so and  being much more empathetic  and patient as Erika suggests towards those  students  who seems not  willing to participate and share things, ideas , values with the rest of the group class.

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Module
2: Recognising cultural diversity for learning in everyday practice 

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Module
2: Recognising cultural diversity for learning in everyday practice 

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The Learning Objects for this module are:
Develop methods how you can work with students who do not speak the language of instruction very well

1. Identify ways how to build a sense of belonging and identity in your class and your school

2. Reflect on how you develop empathy and open-mindedness

3. Prepare a lesson plan that incorporates activities, ideas, etc. of what you have learned on this course

4. Reflect about what makes a good lesson that develops intercultural competence of students by reviewing the work of three other course participants.

5.  Padlet:I teach in a high secondary school and I teach from the first class to the fifth class so the age range is 13/ 19 years old, my course specialization is IT. This year I have four boys born in Italy but their parents are originally from Shri-Lanka. Last year two of them failed their school year so they are attending the first class again. The relationship with them was very difficult, they didn’t interact with the other students and sometimes their behaviour was very bad they didn’t attend school on a regular basis and they were not interested in the school. However we as teachers of this class didn’t plan any common activities to encourage integration, to arouse motivation every teacher tried to approach  them and their parents but without any success, it was a failure!

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Why are we interested in cultural diversity in schools?

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How to develop intercultural competence as a teacher?

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Uploaded by School Education Gateway on 2016-09-07.

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1.5 Understanding different models of living &
working together in culturally diverse communities

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1.5 Understanding different models of living &
working together in culturally diverse communities

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1.4 Developing intercultural competences of your
students.

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1.4 Developing intercultural competences of your
students.

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Reflect on the various areas highlighted by Alicia and Erika in the video below and identify any other areas you feel that are important to address with your students to develop their intercultural competence. Are there any aspects Alicia and Erika did not mention? And which of the areas are the most challenging.
Padlet: The words used in the video that have struck me are empathy, respect , collaboration, key words to get integration and inclusiveness among students who are usually distrustful towards the unknown. So it's important to develop in our students an intercultural competence, in order to accept diversity and to use it to enrich their life experience and help them to build their own character. That is possible through activities which allow students to get to know each other, to appreciate cultural differences, to solve confllicts. Therefore we have to teach how to work together to achieve a common goal, how to communicate properly to understand each other, so to avoid misunderstanding and bad behaviour. Technology helps us to develop and strengthen these competences in a creative way connecting students each other and exploring the outside world.

Reflections. I think "Drama lab" can foster relations among students based on values such as respect , being open- minded towards the outsiders and the unknown, it works on emapthy and the so called " emotional intelligence since theatre is a space where emotions, body , mind are involved, where different languages interwined. I did such experience with a professional director and it was fantastic both for the students and for me, but unfortunately it lasted only three years.

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As a little activity we would like you to select a teaching resource that you use regularly, it could be anything from a website, textbook, app or worksheet to anything you use with your students. Analyze it in the light of Alicia and Erika's comments and decide if this is a resource that acknowledges and reflects the diverse experiences that exist in your classroom. Then briefly vote in the one-question poll below indicating if you found your resource to be appropriate to use in a culturally diverse classroom. That way we will all see what the situation is like in regards to our teaching resources.
Reflections:
As I wrote in the padlet I haven't used in classroom much material dealing with multiculturalism so far, but thanks  to this course I'll do and will be part of my taching activity. In fact my colleagues and I have presented for this new school year a project based on multiculturalism and intercultural education  involving different school subjects.

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1.2 Developing intercultural
competence as a teacher:

If we want to develop intercultural competence in
our students we need to reflect on our own intercultural competence. A first
step in becoming an interculturally competent teacher is to think about
our own cultural values, beliefs, traditions, etc. and how these impact on our
use of language and actions in the classroom as well as our perceptions of
our students

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1.2 Developing intercultural
competence as a teacher:

If we want to develop intercultural competence in
our students we need to reflect on our own intercultural competence. A first
step in becoming an interculturally competent teacher is to think about
our own cultural values, beliefs, traditions, etc. and how these impact on our
use of language and actions in the classroom as well as our perceptions of
our students

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Which of the areas that Alicia, Erika and Tomislav outline do you feel is most important? And which of these areas do you think you need to work the most on? What could be the biggest challenge for you in becoming an interculturally competent teacher?
Padlet  : I think it's very important as teachers to create for our students a familiar and welcoming environment where all together  manage to overcome racial prejudices. This can be  possible learning to know each other, appreciating different cultures,"Diversity" as a value , using materials dealing with muliculturalism, create our own, collect pictures, food recipes, legends, comparing and pointing out similarities and differences, celebrate in classroom festivals with songs and games, learn words and involve parents who most of the times don't know Italian. With simple tools we can discover new worlds, and remove barriers.
Reflection : Intercultural competent teacher means not to teach what we already know , but as Alicia points out the challenge is to  learn what we don't know , be willing to accept even what we think is distant from our ideas, morals and build bridges to link togheter teachers,  students, parents to create the future society. Pedagogy is very important for us because we have to learn how to approach and involve our  students and make them interact  despite the diversity, different beliefs and norms.

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Module 1: Developing
intercultural competences

1.1 Why address cultural
diversity in schools?

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Module 1: Developing
intercultural competences

1.1 Why address cultural
diversity in schools?

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Learning Objectives:

1. Assess own intercultural competence and identify ways how to become a more interculturally competent teacher

2. Develop some ideas on how to develop students' intercultural competence

3. Develop an understanding of different models of intercultural societies

4. Reflect on which model applies to your country and how it impacts your work at school

PADLET:I'm taking part in this course to learn better how to create activities in my classroom to help students having different cultural, ethnic background to integrate in the classgroup. This is very difficult to achieve as these students born in Italy, who have attended italian school and have learnt to communicate in italian nevertheless their way of thinking, opinions lifestyle is different and we hardly understand it. The process of integration is not successful for most of them.

Reflections: As a Teacher I've to develop in my students an intercultural competence, be open-minded towards new cultures , different lifestyle and languages. In my classroom as Alicia suggested we should use not only the typical English or Italian ,Spanish names very popular in our textbooks but the names in the language of our migrant students, read stories or legends of those countries mostly present in our school, invite the students to talk about their typical food and exchange recipies with the local students, celebrate festivals and get to know each other more deeply. With the help of technologies this is much easier and students can use their creativity to tell about themselves and their world.

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This is our Assembly Hall and  this photo was taken during the mobility in our school, the project was about migration flows at present and in the past.It was a fantastic experience involving seven countries: Ireland, Italy,Portugual, Estonia, Germany Turkey,France.

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My school’s name is ITI “Vittorio Emanuele III” is a large state school for secondary technical education. It boasts a long, prestigious role in technical education in the region having been its first technical industrial school, founded in 1883. The school courses last five years. The school offers three different specializations: Electrotechnics, Mechanics and ICT. English is the most important foreign language and it is, therefore taught in all courses but a small number of students are learning German because they have participated in a  working experience in Germany. At the end of the school the students, after passing their state exams, can either enter university or choose to find a job as specialized technicians. Unfortunately due to school burocracy multimedia tools are not easily accessible even if we have a language lab and tabs for students, so in classroom we use students’ mobile phone or sometimes upon reservation a video classroom to watch films and documentaries. We have taken part in Comenius projects and there is ongoing an Erasmus for students and teachers staff.

School Context

As everyone knows, Sicily, by vocation, has hosted diverse multicultural groups over the centuries. Our school, in particular, presents a multicultural context with students coming from overseas countries, mainly from the Maghreb area, Bangladesh, Shri-Lanka India. This context makes us particularly sensitive to such social issues as integration, tolerance and acceptance of diversity. However I feel that my colleagues and I haven’t developed a good cultural competence yet as to make the process of integration of these students successful and prevent the risk of social exclusion and the school dropping out.

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Hello !
My name is Paola Lo Cicero from Palermo, I teach English and IT in English as my school includes courses of IT. My students are 14-19 years old and a few of them come from not european countires. I've participated in Comenius projects, the last one was about migration, the title was "Voices from the Sea " a project that sprang after the Arab spring 2011.  I like tavelling and exchange cultural experiences with new collegues. Good start for all of us!

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Teacher Academy Gateway: Cultural Diversity in your Classroom

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Teacher Academy Gateway: Cultural Diversity in your Classroom

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