While many of the global projects and activities I write about are large and may be overwhelming to other educators just starting their journey to becoming a global educator, other times I create lessons that simply touch on global as I transform lessons from my traditional math class into something with a global twist.
This week the 5th graders are practicing powers of 10 and scientific notation. After having them watch a video at night on the concepts #flippedclass, and working through a few traditional warmups with buddies, I handed them this worksheet and allowed them to discover a little bit about the world we live in for further practice. This lesson proves that you don't have to sacrifice core elements of your curriculum to go global, but rather you simply use the statistics of the world to practice concepts you are teaching. Why couldn't they discover more than 5?
Using geohive the boys worked through this document. I have imaged it here too.
The boys started to choose countries that many of them had never heard of. And within their inquiry they also discovered population growth and how it differs from country to country. This led to informal discovery to "why", with small conversations about disease, poverty etc... It was fun for them to look around the room and relate this to the millenium goal posters my 7th graders had made. The real fun was then watching them use google earth, 360 cities and www.ifitweremyhome to learn more about their chosen countries. Rewarded with this 10 minutes of inquiry, they had no problem heading home to practice their skills a little more. #balance #blendedlearning
While I continue to hear people say that it's hard to make math global, while reading this recent blog post by Homa Tavangar the following really resonated with me: "As practice is built around the integration of global themes in everyday learning, you will begin to find that you no longer have to make a difficult either-or decision between test results and global know-how, or between fulfilling mandated curricular requirements and bringing the world to your students. Successful implementation of global education can expand what you thought was possible and create a more fulfilling, productive, life-long learning process for your students and for you—before you even buy plane tickets".
To me, it's strange not to go global on even the simple things anymore. The more you immerse yourself in it, the deeper you get, the more you will realize that their is no turning back. Start with a passion and transform it into practice, it will be rewarding for all.