Days 1-5 - 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Week

Goals:

1. The students will become more familiar with news stories, and everyday events occurring in the Caribbean region.

2. To influence the students to become used to, and comfortable with, reading newspapers, informational magazines, and computers and to connect those resources to class work.

3. Students should begin to use pictures, and their interpretations of them, and written text, as sources of information.

4. Students will work together to decorate their classroom with pictures and images of the Caribbean to make the classroom a lively learning environment.

5. Students should develop a tendency to be "healthy consumers" of news articles and pictures.

6. To influence students to think about causes and consequences of the stories and events they bring in.

Time:

15 - 30 minutes each day

Resources/Materials:

tape, scissors, paste, poster board, construction paper, students, teacher (need to bring in a news story and image of your own), any other materials allowing students to enhance the classroom environment, chalk, chalkboard (to put ideas on the board when discussing them), newspapers, magazines

Procedure:

1. Begin the lesson by discussing a news article or picture that has to do with the Caribbean or relates to something learned in class up to this point. Try to relate it to the students in some way. For example, if the trading has been halted due to a hurricane or importing customs, then explain to the students that it would be like not getting what you need all the time. If the trading between nations stopped, students might not be able to get some of the music they might want to hear, such as reggae. Food might not be as readily accessible. "What might be some reasons that this occurred?" "What are some of the foods that you (the students) like that are from other countries?" "What would be some of the consequences of only being able to use food grown from your own region?"

2. Place the finding (news article or images) on a bulletin board, or somewhere around the room, and make sure students have access to it and can see and/or read it.

3. Next, discuss any articles and/or pictures that the students have brought in and how they relate to the Caribbean. Try to discuss ways in which the articles can be related to the students. The student should explain the article, or what insights the picture brings to the project. For example, if there is a picture of a couple dancing on a beach, "Are they tourists?", "Do you think tourism is important to this region?","What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of having tourism an essential part of your economy?" Try to connect aspects of the Caribbean region to the students, so they can discuss what it might be like in the region.

4. After discussing the happenings, images, and ideas, encourage students to be as creative as possible in relating things to the Caribbean and what they are learning by browsing through various resources at home and free time in school. Encourage students to think about the causes and consequences of the articles or images they find.

5. Allow some time to do the actual constructing and decorating with what the students have contributed. The students are decorating here by putting their articles or pictures on the walls or the board. Again , let the students be creative and active within the appropriate limits of a classroom.

Assessment:

The focus of assessment for this activity is participation and cooperation. Those students who do not participate need to be encouraged throughout the week to try to submit something to this everyday activity.

4 The student communicates the idea of his/her article or picture in an insightful manner and makes connections to the relevance of his/her idea or picture to the unit on the Caribbean.

3 The student effectively communicates what his/her article or picture is refering to.

2 The student demonstrates an attempt to communicate what his/her picture or article is talking about but makes a slight error(s).

1 The student demonstrates no attempt to communicate what his/her article or picture represents.

(Adopted from Green Bay Area Public Schools)

Curricular Strands:

History - current events applied to everyday life

Cooperative Learning - students working together to build the classroom

Geography - location of places in the Caribbean region

Language Arts - communication of ideas

Art - visual representation of findings around the room

Critical Analysis - analyzing cause and effect relationships in current events

Science/Math - possible subjects of articles and pictures

Extensions:

A possible extension for this daily activity could be a subscription to a Caribbean type of magazine and use that for the article and pictures. Or, a class could analyze brochures and traveling magazines and discuss the goal of these publications and what are they not telling you. "What might be some ideas that these publications would not want you to know?" Another extension would be to have this lesson be about current events in world news rather than exclusively the Caribbean. Analyze newspapers, pictures, magazines, publications, and facilitate students to look at media objectivity as an everyday activity in world news.

Carribean Unit - written by Trina Collins, Richard Wheeler, & Daniel Shimek

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