Celebrating Cultural Diversity at Your School

 Scenario

You have been studying the concept of culture in World Cultures class. You have also learned about the various components of culture, such as race, religion, and language. As a nation of immigrants, the United States is considered to be a multicultural society. A multicultural society reflects the characteristics of many different cultures in one society.

One source of information about our nation's cultural characteristics is the U.S. Census. The Census contains demographic data about population segments in the United States. Demographics are statistics (number data) that show how many people in a population segment share certain characteristics. For example, did you know that 13% of Americans are school-aged children between the ages of 5-13? Or that nearly 15 % of Americans consider themselves to be of German or part-German ancestry? According to the latest U.S. Census, America's population is more culturally diverse today than ever before.

Your school's administration has asked your magnet class to form a school Culture Committee. The Culture Committee will be responsible for gathering information about cultural diversity at your school, and for sharing this information with the school community (students, staff, and parents). This information will help your school to accomplish its goal to provide all students with an education that is multicultural. A multicultural education is one that reflects the diverse cultural characteristics of the world in which students live-- including their country, state, county and local school community. Your committee will need to use a structured research process to locate and analyze information to help you answer the essential question:.

Task and Product

You will be working with a group of up to four students to gather demographic statistics about population segments in four regions:

• United States
• Maryland
• Baltimore County
• Your Middle School (Grade Six)

National, state, and county demographics are available from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Census. In order to obtain current information about the cultural characteristics of students at your school, you will need to conduct your own census.

Since statistical information is often easier to understand and compare when it is presented in a visual format, you will be using an online program to create bar graphs to display your demographic data.

You will then create an individual product or presentation in order to share what you have learned about cultural characteristics at your school. This could be:

• digital photo album or photo collage
• video report for school TV newscast
• news article for school newspaper
• original artwork
• original poetry
• song lyrics (with or without recorded music)
• music video (with original song lyrics)
• other project/presentation as approved by your teacher

Visual and performance projects must include a written component (captions, storyboard, etc.).

Assessment

You will be graded on your daily work on the research process, your demographic bar graph, and your final product and presentation.

Research Process Scoring Tools:

• Daily Research Assessments (Formative)
• Student Self-Assessment Rubric for Research Model (Summative)
• Teacher Assessment Rubric for Research Model (Summative)

Bar Graph Scoring Tool

• Performance Assessment List for Bar Graph

Product/Presentation Scoring Tools:

 Question

 Essential Question guiding your research:

Subsidiary Questions for Demographic Bar Graphs:
For each of the four population regions:

• United States
• Maryland
• Baltimore County
• Your school (sixth grade)

1. RACE: How many people are White? African American? Hispanic? Asian? Another race/mixed race?
2. LANGUAGE: How many people speak English at home? How many speak a language other than English at home?
3. RELIGION: How many people are Catholic? Protestant? Jewish? Muslim? Another religion/no religion?
4. COUTRY OF ORIGIN: How many people were born in the United States? How many were born in another country?
5. OTHER CULTURAL CHARACTERISTIC: What else would you like to know about the cultural characteristics of people in these four regions? Write one or more "how many" questions of your own.

 Gather and Sort

Each group member will gather demographic data for one cultural characteristic (race, language, religion, country of origin) for each of the four population regions.

Use this chart to record and sort your data.

Be sure to avoid plagiarism and keep track of your resources for a bibliography.

To learn more about citing your sources in a bibliography, view and listen to this Brain Pop movie and take the quiz: Citing Sources: Giving Credit Where Credit is Due!

 Organize

• Analyze your research notes to determine if you have answered your subsidiary questions.

  • Have you gathered sufficient data to create your Demographic Bar Graph?

• Meet as a team in order to have team-members share their research findings.
  • What new insights have emerged about your topic?
  • Which facts are the most compelling and would best address the needs of your audience?
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your research for the task..
  • Does your commitee have sufficient information to answer the essential question:

Synthesize your findings by writing a first draft of your

 Conclusion