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Activity 31
Continental Connections: The Twenty-Four Hour Trip

Adapted from "Continental Connections: The Twenty-Four Hour Trip," in Intercom # 104, Moving Toward a Global Perspectives: Social Studies and Second Languages.  New York: Global Perspectives in Education, Inc. 1983. pp 5-6.

Grade Level

Middle School

Introduction

Many students are unaware of their connections to the rest of the world.  They tend to view the United States, sometimes even their own cities or towns, as the center of the universe.  The increasingly global nature of our world requires that teachers help students to understand their interconnectedness to the rest of the world.

Teacher/Student Objective

The general goal of this lesson is to decrease students' egocentricity and ethnocentricity and move them to a more global view, as well as to reinforce basic geographic knowledge.

Gauging Student Understanding

The progress indicators cited reflect desirable end goals.  Teachers should be prepared to use a wide variety of observational, testing and authentic achievement evaluation measures in judging the progress of students.

By engaging in an activity involving their personal experiences and relating them to various areas around the world, the students will demonstrate their observational and analytic skills.  They will learn to identify and locate specific personal contacts that have a global relationship to themselves.  This development will be evident in the personal maps which the students will produce.

Suggested Materials

• Sample items which can be used as illustrations to help students to clearly understand their task.
• Copies of Handout 31A, World Map.  (See Handout 11A).

Initial Data for Consideration and/or Process

Students will brainstorm a list of possible connections they might have to other countries.  This will assist them in working on their own maps later.

Distribute Handout 31A, World Map to each student and assist them in locating one connection as an example of their assignment.  Indicate clearly that each student's map will be different.  It may be helpful, depending on the students' ability level, if the teacher holds up a map to show how she has plotted her own personal map.

Some of the following questions might help students to debrief their activity:

• On how many continents did you find connections to your life?
• To which parts of the world did you connect most frequently?  Why do you suppose this was true?
• To which parts of the world did you have no connections at all?  Why do you suppose this was true?
• Do any patterns seem to emerge from your connections?

Other Possible Activities

• A variation on this activity could involve students in looking and listening for language connections to other parts of this world.  This might be done by watching television or listening to radio broadcasts, or listening to people in their neighborhood.
• Choose one product, such as an automobile or a candy bar, and "travel" to all the parts of the world that contributed parts or ingredients to those products.  You could display a bulletin board showing the different parts or ingredients and connect them with string to the countries on a world map.
  
  
  

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