With partners:
Interdisciplinary Resources
The American site Tolerance.org offers a wide range of resources for teachers, as well as for young and older students and their parents. This link takes you to a media literacy activity focused on skills of critical analysis: http://www.tolerance.org/teach/web/ptolerance/plan.jsp?cid=53
One language centre in a high school uses the following cross-cultural activity to increase students’ awareness of differences in classroom and school culture, between their previous education experience and Australia.
TEACHER: With the advanced English class we do a little unit on school rules and punishment in their country. They love it because they all compare what happened to them when they were naughty. Usually it’s widely exaggerated but they love sharing it with each other – “At our school they made us kneel on the ground on pebbles”, “At our school they hit us and punched us”… Often what they find out is that a lot of the things are the same… Then we get a guest speaker from the high school and they get to ask as many things as they like about what they can and can’t do at high school and what the punishments will be. So it starts with them, then they share it with others and the last step is what is going to happen when they move to high school.
TEACHER: And often they’re quite relieved by the rules here….
TEACHER: When they come to Australia they learn there’s no punishment here, so they think they’re allowed to do anything, because you can’t hit them. So they have to learn that yes in fact you are being punished. It just doesn’t feel like it.