Students will share what life is like for them outside of school and learn about life in a foreign country through the story of a traveling bear.
The classroom teddy bear will go home with California students on weekends (or week nights) throughout the fall. Families will take pictures of the bear doing activities with the student. The teacher and/or students will make a slideshow of the bear’s adventures using google slides. The bear will be mailed to Taiwan over the long holiday in December. The bear will travel with Taiwanese students in the late winter/spring. The Taiwanese teacher and students will finish the slideshow with their pictures and share it with their US friends.
Assign the bear to a student for the weekend (5 minutes):
1.Draw a name on Friday morning to see who will get to take the bear home for the weekend.
2. Keep track of who’s name has been pulled
3.Use the parent letter to inform parents that the bear will be coming home and what expectations are.
4. Emphasize to the student (and parents) that the purpose of the bear’s trip home is to show students in Taiwan what life is like where you live.
Bear at home (weekend work)
1. The bear “hangs out” with the student all weekend
2. Parents take pictures and videos of the bear with the family and your student.
3. Parents email you 10 photos and 1 video (or whatever number you deem appropriate)
The Following Week (25 minutes):
1. Student shares photos and video of the bear’s weekend during at some point. (10 minutes)
2. Student picks 2-3 of her favorite photos/videos to include in the slideshow. (5 minutes)
3. Student (or teacher) writes a paragraph for each picture describing what is going on in the photo. Students may use the sentence starter template if they want.
4. Teacher makes a copy of one of the Google Slide templates
5.Teacher (or student) uploads photos and the paragraph to the google slide presentation.
6. Student translates the paragraph into Chinese using Google Translate
Repeat steps 1-3 with the remainder of your class throughout the fall and early winter (30 minutes/week)
Mail the bear to Taiwan no later then the December holiday break.
California Digital Literacy Standards:
- Create, edit and format text on a slide
- Create a series of slides and organize them to present research or convey an idea
- Copy and paste or import graphics; change their size and
position on a slide
- Use a variety of age‐appropriate technologies (e.g. drawing program, presentation software) to communicate and exchange ideas
- Create projects that use text and various forms of graphics, audio, and video, (with proper citations) to communicate ideas.
- W 6, W 10 SL 3 Use teacher developed guidelines to evaluate multimedia presentations for organization, content, design, presentation and appropriateness of citations.
Grade 4 ELA:
- Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique,
descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
- Orient the reader by establishing a situation and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize
an event sequence that unfolds naturally.
- Use dialogue and description to develop experiences and events or show the responses of
characters to situations.
- Use a variety of transitional words and phrases to manage the sequence of events.
- Use concrete words and phrases and sensory details to convey experiences and events precisely.
California’s Social & Emotional Learning Guidelines:
- Includes social, emotional, or physical well-being as a goal of education
- Is relevant or responsive to students either personally or culturally
- Builds human capacity by focusing on relationship-building experiences or environments
- Partners with families or community
