Introduction
This websites provides
information mostly for English teachers and to some extent for students
of English. With
this website, teachers
are able to do a whole unit on the Inuits. You get background information,
an outline of the
lessons, useful information
on the topic and links for help.
In English G 2000 D4 (erweiterte
Ausgabe/for 8th graders) are two pages that deal with Canada and the Inuits.
Since this is a popular
schoolbook, we would like to give teachers further information about the
Inuits living in
Canada. If there is enough
time, teachers can do our whole project.
The project could be done
with 8-10th graders.
Reasons for choosing the Inuits
To our mind, native cultures
are a great attraction for pupils. They probably all know Native Indians
(Sioux,
Cheyenne, …). Pupils are
interested in the Native way of life, the history, rituals and stories.
In our opinion this
should be used for English
lessons.
The Inuits are not as
much as popular as other Natives, so we thought pupils would learn a lot
with our project. We
think it is a good combination:
on the one side, pupils have some pre-knowledge and are fascinated on the
subject,
on the other side, they
get to know something new and different from their lives.
With our project, intercultural
learning is possible. Pupils get the possibility to learn something about
the Inuits
and their culture, their
way of life, rituals, their history, the school system and education and
their everyday life.
Pupils can compare their
life with the life of Inuits at the same age.
We would like the teachers
to do a project following the work with our website. Here pupils get the
possibility to
use their knowledge in
a creative way: they could do posters, collages and they could write
essays. Teachers could
transfer the topic to
other subjects. After that, pupils are able to do an exhibition on the
“Inuits”.
Starting the project
We thought that teachers
should start the first lesson with Canada. If you work with English G 2000,
you can do
the quiz on page 90 and
read the texts on page 91. This leads you to the “Natives”. If you are
not working with this
book, our suggestion would
be that you hang up pictures (e. g. the Canadian flag, a map, pictures
of the
landscape, photos of people,
Natives, animals, …) on the walls. Pupils walk around and have a look them.
After
that, you should have
a discussion in class about the pictures (description, student`s expectations/feelings,
their
knowledge).
What is important
The subtopics we chose are the following:
o history (of the tribe) and how they lived in these times
o nature/animals (their relationship earlier and now)
o Nunavut (to show how they live today)
o art and literature (expresses the history, the relationship to nature/animals,
...)
As all these topics
are intervined, teachers and pupils have to deal with more than one subtopic
in a lesson.
There are a lot
of interesting things that we do not deal with. If teachers would like
to do more lessons on one
subtopic, we give
them helpful information by links or the bibliography.
Mostly teachers have to
work with computers and the internet, but we have some activities that
pupils can do with
the computer.
So be sure that you –
as a teacher – have the possibility to work with your pupils in a “Computer-Room”
or
something like this. If
pupils are not used to working with a computer, you have to give them a
short introduction.
About us
We are five students (two
from Justus-Liebig University in Giessen and three from the University
in Heidelberg) that like to
become teachers.
We did this website as
an suggestion for a unit in an email project between the two named universities.
more
information