Today ILI staff supported Mike Syverson’s World Culture class with activities that link to the Chapter 2 concept of “order.”  The reason “order” was picked as a concept is because Chapter 2 covers the beginning of ancient river civilizations.  This is the time that tribes of people who were nomadic began to settle in one location and began to develop “civilizations.”  With these civilizations on water routes came trade with other peoples and the need to communicate across cultural and language barriers.  The activities Craig facilitated were based on the idea of how we communicate and learn to communicate in new ways.  Also as civilizations became more formal they began to have to get “organized.”  The second two activities addressed organization and how different people organize differently and how civilizations organized differently forming different cultures and cultural norms.  Also they developed written languages mostly in the forms of hieroglyphics and pictographs.
 
The activities that we did were:  “Name Lineup”; this is an activity where the students are instructed to line up according to the first letter of their first name.  All of the classes did a great job with this.  Once that idea was well established from the first activity we went to a more difficult challenge, “Silent Birthday Lineup” this has the same principles as the last activity except that they cannot speak.  The classes had a bit more difficult time with this activity, but all did well.  After these activities, we processed with the students about which activity was harder and which activity was easier and why.  We discussed the river civilizations and related the ideas of communication to how trade was conducted.  Then we went on to two other activities using M&M’s.  The students received a handful of M&M’s and we asked not to eat them.  Then, they were asked to “order” their M&M’s.  This brought frustration to some and joy to others because of the ambiguousness of the instructions.  After the students were done, we asked them to explain why they had ordered their M&M’s the way they did.  Then, we asked the students to make a picture with the M&M’s about themselves.  Most students really enjoyed themselves with this project.  When everyone was done we asked for volunteers to share their stories.  Finally we tied that to how ancient civilizations told their stories.—Hieroglyphics, pictographs, etc.
 
This pilot project is a collaborative partnership between ILI staff and LUHS staff to bring ILI activities and approach into the classrooms of the school in a way that helps LUHS staff enhance the delivery of curricular ideas in a manner that engages a variety of learning styles, building relationships in the process. 

Bob Kovar, Project Director
Intercultural Leadership Initiative