Description
What is life like somewhere else? Join us for a full year exploratory course of the planets humans, how they live and how they interact with an eye on building conflict resolution skills by finding commonalities and understanding disconnects. Students will meet in class once per week and will have offline work with optional family field trips to do between classes. Parents and students will be participating in an online portal to keep on top of assignments and progress.
Middle School World Cultures & Religions
Social Studies
In-person class Mondays, 11:30 am -12:30 pm with an additional approximately 1-2 hours of work to be done between classes. (Parents may opt to enroll in our Supported Homework Session/s to complete work done outside of regular class time)
Registration is now for the Spring 2024 semester (13 weeks)
[rara_toggle title=”Concepts Covered” status=”close”]
The key concepts for World Cultures and Religions are:
- Use and think about maps and timelines
- Interpret the implications of geography as it relates to culture and religion
- Characterize and analyze changing interconnections among geography, cultures and religions
- Understand the commonalities and differences among cultures and religions
- Evaluate potential challenges and solutions for conflict resolution between disparate groups
Minimum content covered in the course include:
- Basic physical geography of Earth
- Major traits of at least five dominant cultures on Earth
- Major tenets of at least five dominant religions on Earth
- Use of appropriate resources, tools and documentation methods to explore and communicate course content
Additional content may be covered depending on the pace of student learning and the direction their discovery moves.
[/rara_toggle]
[rara_toggle title=”Required Materials” status=”close”]Students will need:
- colored pencil set (10-12 colors)
- covered pencil sharpener (blade not exposed)
- 12″ ruler
- pencil bag to contain items
- pocket folder
Additionally, students will need technical ability to access Zoom, Nearpod.com, Discovery Education Streaming, Study.com and Schoology.com (Schoology will require an e-mail address for student access).
At home, students will need access to the internet (home or library) to look up information, related published materials and/or videos and do work through our class learning management system. Some videos will be subscription-based and issued by illuminat-ED (all students will have accounts for Discovery Streaming and Study.com for additional video support). Some videos will be freely available.
[/rara_toggle]
[rara_toggle title=”What Does Class Time Look Like?” status=”close”]
Live class time will assume students have done their pre-reading, online content and any offline work. We will spend in-person class time collaboratively discussing and analyzing our offline work and building upon that in addition to some hands-on and practical activities.
[/rara_toggle]
[rara_toggle title=”Time Required Outside of Class” status=”close”]
Approximately 1-2 hours/week homework depending on your student’s speed and the content of the week.
Additionally, parents may or may not participate in potential field trips related to the course content, but this is not required as these trips would not be during class time and family schedules vary. Similarly, students may or may not be asked to visit local places between classes to enhance their learning – which again, is at the discretion and availability of the individual families.
[/rara_toggle]
[rara_toggle title=”Is This Level a Good Fit for My Child? Parent Considerations” status=”close”]
This is a tween-oriented course that will challenge your child’s perspectives and understanding of people that are different. Students aged 11+ should be ready to start contributing meaningfully to discussions about cultures or religions with an open-mind that can take new information and/or others input and evaluate it rather than simply tossing it aside because it doesn’t fit their existing mindset.
Students will also regularly be on point to share ideas in front of a group. Shy students will not be bullied into participating by any means; but if your student does not have a habit of “warming up” after getting to know a group–this may not be a comfortable setting for them.
[/rara_toggle]
