Small objects, family stories

Stage of Schooling

Lower Primary

Learning Focus

Culture (Asia Scope and Sequence for Studies of Society and Environment, p12). While the activities in this unit focus on skills and concepts supporting the Culture aspect, students will also develop skills and concepts supporting the Time, Continuity and Change aspect.

Elaborations

Students understand that peoples in Asia and Australia belong to cultural groups that have particular forms of cultural expression. Students explore how the life stories of people from Asia and Australia shape how they view the past.

Resources

• Snapshots of Asia series (Curriculum Corporation, 2001)
• Snapshots of Asia Teacher Guide (Curriculum Corporation, 2001)
• Images of Asia (Curriculum Corporation, 2004)
• Small Object Big Story Immigration Museum (Victoria), website
• The Really Big Beliefs Project (Curriculum Corporation, 2005)
• Voices and Values (Curriculum Corporation, 1998)
• Large map of the world
• Art materials, including large sheets of paper, cardboard, pencils, textas, paint and blu-tac

Focus question

Can family objects provide us with a snapshot of how a family lives day to day, and what they value and celebrate?

Overview

Family is an important starting point when exploring the notion of culture. This unit focuses on valued family objects, providing an opportunity for students to develop questioning skills and to tell stories that explore values and symbols important to their particular culture.

Notes to teacher

It would be valuable to explore the cultural background of students in your class as part of this unit. However, this process requires sensitivity as there may be a number of subcultures within students' families, issues with regards to photographs of deceased members of Aboriginal students, families and reasons why students may not wish to talk about their family background.

If your class group does not include students with an Asian background, it may be necessary to make connections within the school and beyond, to the wider community. If possible, you may wish to teach this unit of work during a student exchange visit to your school. This would provide opportunities for oral questioning activities.

In some cases, especially in remote locations, collaborative projects via the internet may provide your students with opportunities to connect and hear family stories from cultures other than their own.

IEARN (the International Education And Resource Network) and EPALS websites provide excellent online collaborative projects. IEARN also provides professional learning support for teachers wishing to teach about cultures. ('Connecting Cultures … A Teacher's Guide to a Global Classroom': this is a PDF file found in the professional development section on the website www.iearn.org/teachersguide.pdf (12.7MB PDF))

EPALS is an interesting collaborative email project that allows students aged 6-11 years to explore other cultures via e-pal interaction. The project is called 'The Way We Are' and is found at: www.epals.com/projects/thewayweare

Duration

This activity may be completed intensively over two weeks or spread over a number of weekly blocks of one hour, depending on the number of countries of Asia you wish to explore. This unit also offers opportunities to link with other learning areas and could be expanded into a fully integrated unit. The Snapshots of Asia Teacher's Guide provides a number of excellent suggestions to support integrated teaching units of work.