My World: A Culturally Responsive Kickoff Activity

One-Sentence Learning Plan

Students will engage each other (and the teacher) in small group and class deliberations by working collaboratively to deduce information about the teacher (and each other) with the goal of beginning to co-create an inclusive and cognitively insightful safe space to collaborat in.

Introductory video will go here

Activity Sequence:

The teacher uses the presentation as an opportunity to introduce herself and to model several culturally responsive routines and rituals that will be practiced in the class. Timing for each step will be contingent on local class context and needs.

1. 1. Review instructions on Slide 2. Clarify as needed.

   2. The students are paired up and asked to deduce the questions for each of the answers on Slide 3. They add to their "first deductions" to the sandbox on their My World G-Doc. Teacher patrols and encourages an air of mystery, curiosity, and encouragement. (Students are not expected to deduce all of the correct questions at any stage of this activity by design).

   3. After an appropriate amount of time, pairs are merged into groups of 4 or 6 in order to deliberate toward best second deductions and add them to the appropriate section of the My World G-Doc.

   4. The teacher brings the class together and leads them through each answer/question couplet gradually revealing the correct questions (which students add to their My World Documents) while simultaneously modeling the desired culturally responsive rituals and routines. This final section serves as the first exit ticket benchmark.

   5. Extension (Homework or second possible exit ticket):

      1. Option 1: Students are asked to fill out the "My World" section on the G-Doc with their own answers and questions. Directions are on the form, but the exercise should be quite comprehensible for any student who participated in the activity.

         • Students can be given the choice to submit it directly to the teacher or to a folder to share with the class.

      2. Option 2: Students are given a copy of the My World presentation template and are asked to follow the teacher's model and create "their world."

   6. Either version of the extension activity is intended as a tool for carrying the conversation forward to build learning partnerships with each student and a learning community in the class as a whole.

Culturally Responsive Teaching Targets and Synergy with Local Values

The following document outlines culturally responsive teaching targets inspired by Zaretta Hammond in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain and my work in international schools.

The chart further suggests:

• Trust generators through which the teacher can form more intimate collegial connections and authentic rapport with students and colleagues (Hammond 79).

• Synergies between culturally responsive teaching and the IB Learner Profile attributes, which have been chosen as a representative example because so many international schools adopt them, or have core values that echo them.