My course's diary: Cultural Diversity in che classroom. by Annamaria Fratangelo

WO AM I? I'm a teacher in primary school where I work since 2000. Struck by many curiosities, I'm interested in color, music, dance, drama with puppets and creating various objects with mostly recycled materials. I like to propose to the students, through laboratory activities, issues of environmental education, education for citizenship and respect for diversity. I would like learn how to use tablet in my classroom with pupils 8 yers old.

annafrata — 2015-04-15 15:35:39 UTC

annafrata — 2015-04-15 16:17:16 UTC

1. Why do I want to use tablets? In other words what is the added benefit in general and more importantly what is the benefit for my own situation.

2. What do I need to consider at a more broader, whole-school level when using tablets?

3. What do I need to consider at a classroom level when using tablets?

So at the end of this module you should have achieved the following learning objectives:

1. Reflected on the use of tablets in general as well as in your specific situation

2. Explored a range of challenges of using tablets in schools

3. Identified a key challenge for your school and suggested an idea how to address it

4. Explored a range of challenges of using tablets in classrooms

5. Identified a key challenge for your classroom and suggested an idea how to address it

My main reasonfor using or wanting to use ICT in my classroom

annafrata — 2015-04-15 16:47:15 UTC

I work with pupils 10 years aged. They love PC games. I can
interest them and support their motivation to study. In our school we
have few PC and they must to work in pair or three. They learn to collaborate,
wait for their turn but we can not do a good work during the day. I want to use tablets because their technical versatility and their relatively low cost make them accessible to the majority of students. Through the BYOD every pupil can have his personal device. I
think that they are very useful to improve digital literacy and communication.

The tablets are good because the students can learn by themselves, they can acces
to a wide range of information and tools and share it with their classmates. Besides,
their motivation increase when they use news technologies.

My School, Classroom and Technologies

annafrata — 2015-04-20 11:51:41 UTC

My school is a omnicomprehensive school for pupils aged three to 18 years and has about 2000 students on roll. It is a co-ed establishment. It's a very small detached building with 5 classes from first to fifth. In the lower floor there are children in kindergarten. A building is over 35 years old and my classroom hasn't seen much change since then. I have a PC in the class and a whiteboards shared with other classes.
the digital whiteboard is in a computer lab where there are 6 PC. I bought myself a tablet and I use it with disabled pupils or for find material and try to listen songs
I use free apps with simple games for two disabled pupils

Hello everybody! I'm very happy to share my ideas with you. I'm a support teacher I live in a little town in the middle of Italy. I teach in a Primary school in a fith class were I try to promote te inclusion for a ADHD pupil. This is for me the seventeen year of theaching. During my career I passed through many school. I worked trhee years in Turin like math, science, music, sport teacher in different classroom with a great variety of cultures. I believe hard to the power of nature to create a good learn environment. In every school were I worked I create with pupils an educational vegetable garden.

2017-03-07 14:14:09 UTC

Hello everybody! I'm very happy to share my ideas with you. I'm a support teacher I live in a little town in the middle of Italy. I teach in a Primary school in a fith class were I try to promote te inclusion for a ADHD pupil. This is for me the seventeen year of theaching. During my career I passed through many school. I worked trhee years in Turin like math, science, music, sport teacher in different classroom with a great variety of cultures. I believe hard to the power of nature to create a good learn environment. In every school were I worked I create with pupils an educational vegetable garden.

2017-03-07 14:15:42 UTC

I live in a very small region (250.000 inhabitans) Even in the small villages there are a lot of students from many countries. It is very important that we teachers help our pupils to collaborate, to communicate, even in different languages, to exchange cultures. In this way we can dream and promote a peaceful way to learn from each other and be able to create new cultural forms for their future lives.

2017-03-07 14:24:03 UTC

How to develop intercultural competence as a teacher?

2017-03-07 14:27:32 UTC

Alicia Erika say a lot of sharable ideas. first: start from themselves(Socrate teach"Gnose te ipsum")
second: accept others
as well as it is with its lights and its shadows.
third: reflect and make students understand all cultures are equal, not only the culture of the country where they live. I believe this is the most important task of multicultural teaching: to teach the students to know their cultural identity and at the same time to respect other students' cultures.
About Tomislav's speech
LANGUAGE : try to improve foreign and mother tongue language skills of all school actors.

PEDAGOGY
learn about tools, methods, activities to promote dialogue, learning and inclusive education.

SOCIAL IDENTITY
use of theater techniques, philosophy and free conversation

to know: Who am I?
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT
COMMUNITY
create convivial situations through a party, informal meetings, cineforum, dancing, tasting of food from the own country to facilitate the meeting of people and try to loose our fears about different people.

RELATIONSHIPS
take care of relations, use the right words to encourage,
without judging and smile.

Developing intercultural competences of your students

2017-03-07 15:03:33 UTC

I'm agree with Erika and Alicia: empathy, acceptance of other people's ideas, the critical thinking, use of ICT, playful and joyful teaching, the encouragement of dialogue between students. The diversity is useful, open the mind and offer educational challenges.

Self reflection excercise

2017-03-07 15:17:09 UTC

Recognising cultural diversity for learning in everiday practice
Open and reflective to accommodate and value the diversity

You are a reflective practitioner who is open to trying out new things to ensure the diversity of your students is valued and recognized in your teaching approaches. You make the learning process relevant to your students by adapting resources or providing examples that reflect the student’s experiences. You try to integrate cultural diversity as a topic in your teaching beyond prescribed moments in the curriculum.

Take a look at this table with the different answer options to see other ways how cultural diversity can be addressed in the classroom.

Develop methods how you can work with students who do not speak the language of instruction very wellIdentify ways how to build a sense of belonging and identity in your class and your schoolReflect on how you develop empathy and open-mindednessPrepare a lesson plan that incorporates activities, ideas, etc. of what you have learned on this courseReflect about what makes a good lesson that develops intercultural competence of students by reviewing the work of three other course participants

annafrata — 2017-03-08 03:55:42 UTC

share with us some general information about the students you teach. What are their cultural backgrounds? How are they diverse in other ways? Do you have a positive relationship with them? How do they interact with each other?
I teach in a Primary School in the middle of Italy (Molise) In my classes there are 5 students from East Europe(Polland, Romania, Ucraina) China and Switzerland.
They speak a good italian.
There are even some kids with behavioural problems for their familiar backgrounds. They interact with each other because they speak about themselves, their favourite activities during the afternoon (they meet in the center of the village and play togheter). Theachers try to adopt particular strategies creating a collaboration and a positive atmosphere, use ICT to engage and promote individual learning.

Webinar Wednesday, 1st March 17:00h CET - The language profile

annafrata — 2017-03-08 04:23:49 UTC

Unfortunately, I didn't attend this webinar. I have only seen the video… Many thanks to Erika for her presentation!
I'll try to propose my pupils the activity "Drawing a Language Profile"
I agree perfectly to give importance to:
❖ Explain where the languages are situated in my body (what do the parts of the body mean for me?) ❖ Explain why we use which color (what do the colours been) ❖ Important: Give everyone enough time to explain his/her.
I like very much the word: Linquality: to be capable to express what I mean in a language and make others understand what I want to express ❖ without ❖ painful memories ❖ fear problems, conflicts, any danger ❖ feeling inferior, helpless.

Creating a sense of belonging and identity in your class and school

annafrata — 2017-03-08 04:26:08 UTC

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?

I am a support teacher and I teach in two classes. Always I try to create a positive climate between students through dialogue, common passions, shared problems.
The atmosphere is friendly because all meet and play togheter after school. There are some pupils from different countries I’m trying to create cooperative learning situations and promote different laboratrial activities (dances from the world, gardening and planting, music competitions, ICT, theatre...)

Developing empathy and open-mindednessHow did you develop your own open-mindedness and empathy and how would you like to develop it further? How empathic and open-minded do you think your students are already? Can you use your own experiences in your classroom work? How would you adapt the "What is privilege" activity and what other activities can you think of that can develop open-mindedness and empathy.

annafrata — 2017-03-08 04:46:36 UTC

I find the video a very useful activity. It makes students reflect about "What is privilege". I would try it in a fifth class in primary school, leaving the approach basically how it is in the video. I would adapt it making a circle time moment to share their opinions and emotions throught a brainstorming about the meaning of privilege, trying to explain it to the students of different cultures.
then you can ask them to draw this experience and at the end create a video like a simple spot entitled "My privilege".

Supporting students with different first languagesHave you tried already any of the mentioned ideas? How did it work? Do you have any other concrete tips for your peers (e.g. giving students your written notes in advance)? And what strategies can we use that are not too time-consuming for us as teachers?

annafrata — 2017-03-08 09:53:36 UTC

Multilingual school is a great idea! In our classes we could create similar situation through parents and teachers' collaboration, organizing for exemple a meeting between a foreigner parent and students, watching a film about other country, make a ended school party eating sweets from the world and dancing dances from the world maybe teach by the same parents...