Hiding the seams by weaving in culture : language arts lesson plans, prompts, and resources that integrate culture : an honors thesis (HONRS 499)

Abstract

My project is a resource on incorporating culture into a Language Arts classroom. Everything in my project sits under the umbrella theme of culture. Teaching culture incorporates a lot of what is vital to education, including awareness, understanding, exposure to different views, and critical thinking. A lot of teachers may have cultural units or teach about African Americans in February and women in March, but that is not enough. Cultural texts and lessons need to be integrated throughout the school year.I created ten new lesson plans for this project and eleven creative writing prompts. I also penned sample responses to my own prompts and developed four activity webs. Each web contains ideas for pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading activities that can be done with a class for different cultural young adult texts. Some of the lesson plans, prompts, and webs could be used on a wide range of grade levels, especially secondary students.