Visitor Videos – Cultural comparison PBL
They will be here in two weeks. They do speak English, but it is not their first language. They may have traveled to the U.S. before, they may not. One thing is for sure.
They have never seen anything quite like Gaston County.
It’s as true for our community as it is for anyone’s: there are some things about it that would be familiar even to international travelers, but there are other things that you just won’t get if you “ain’t from ’round here.”
Our Sister Cities amigos from Peru (and Germany) will be here soon, and we’ve made arrangements to take a field trip with them, to show them our area and to just be together. We’re all hiking up Crowder’s “Mountain,” which, FYI is about the same level at its peak as the lowest point of Cusco. There were a few things that our kiddos mentioned might have made them feel better prepared for Peru had they been warned, so we (okay, I) thought we’d get our amigos ready before they leave.
I had brainstormed a list of possible topics with some teacher amigas, and everybody raised their hand for the topic they were interested in:
- Social media & technology
- Style and trends (clothes, music, etc)
- Money/prices
- Appropriate clothes/weather
- Emergencies
- Bathrooms
- Transportation
- Families/homes
- School
They’ve listened to my stories, done a teeny bit of research, and sent some Flipgrid video questions via our kiddos (which will hopefully get answered in the next week or so), and now it’s time to start planning our visitors’ videos.
They’ve started working on their scripts, making sure that
- Each group member will speak for at least 30 seconds of the video.
- All group members speak in complete sentences in understandable Spanish.
- Each group member writes their own lines AND adheres to translator policy.
I think our amigos will get a kick out of the videos and maybe even feel a little more at ease when we’re climbing that “mountain” in a few weeks. But however they feel, I know our kids will be a little more open-minded when they get here.
