Multicultural Theme Unit - Coursework Example

Multicultural Theme Unit The multicultural theme unit is a unit specifically designed for to engage is a systematic process of scrutinizing and describing culture and its intricacies. The theme provides vivid explanation to benefits preschool students from diversified non-multicultural and multicultural background to contribute together in the classroom. This fragmentation of educational process can differ from region to region and state to state. There are certain subjects that are studied and celebrated during the process of multicultural thematic part such as cultures, religions, ethnicities and races. Furthermore, this process is implemented within a lower level of elementary grade and preschool level. This thematic unit benefits students to encourage and enhance their appreciation towards individualism and eccentricity among other members in the classroom.The prime purpose of the paper is to provide developmentally methodology towards learning and teaching process by the creation of multicultural theme unit. Moreover, week long detailed information about multicultural theme unit is created. This includes identification of four developmental goals and definition of criteria with teaching strategies. In case of literature-based program, the widely used units for organization of instruction is described to be as thematic units. The fundamental part of thematic units is multicultural literature. The foremost view which defines the concept of multicultural theme unit is differentiating the concept of multiculturalism. The multiculturalism is defined as the combination of cultures and multiple. Therefore, it can be notified that it is vital to include many cultures in the learning process to nullify difference between the dominated and dominant. Multicultural theme unit The lesson plans for multicultural theory should bring diversity on the understanding with the combination of hands-on learning practices. Furthermore, children are confronted with critical thinking skills and fresh ideas. According to Barbara Biles, the early childhood education that has been incorporated in the preschool is described as an effective procedure for the development of racial identity and racial biases. One of the primary activities that I personally think would be included in the preschool activities is Passports. Passports This activity is primarily implemented in earlier childhood education process to promote self-esteem and multicultural awareness. Materials required The materials those are required for the activity arecamera and paper. A passport craft activity is beneficial for a week multicultural theme unit. The passport craft is effectively modeled and presented after American passport. Furthermore, it modeled by showing the national bird and blue cover. This activity would be fruitful by the generosity of volunteer parents. Several countries should be included in the craft. The countries should base on heritage of children in the classroom. Children aged between 3 to 5 years should be helped to color flags of the countries. After completion of the work, photos would be taken of the children holding flags.Otherwise, a hat would be used in classroom based on representative of the country. For instance, if Mexico is selected as a country, then sombrero should be used to provide description about the country. After taking photograph of the children with hat or flags, photographs are pasted in the passports. Children can take home the passports with photographs.This would help them to remember about the cultural journey. Primarily, children should be provided with a booklet. The booklet consists of five sheet of paper which isorganized and stapled. Every alternate day, one country would be focused by sampling relevant song, specific food and reading of stories. This all criteria would be focused on single country. Multicultural book This multicultural activity is based on helping children to enhance their appreciation towards different traditions and cultures. Materials required Glue, ribbon, old magazine, cardboard and construction paper are required materials. This activity is viewed to be as one of the best language recognition process to enhance the cultural awareness of the children in the classroom. Being a teacher in the classroom, children are told to cut various pictures that can be found on old national geographic magazines and books. Furthermore, the pictures that are cut out from the magazines are used to make a book with the help of cardboard and construction paper. Children with the help of glue would paste pictures on to every pages of the book. Finally, holes are used to be created and additionally ribbons are also added to create a book. Children are told to dictate their perception and thoughts about the pictures. Then responses of the children are being noted on to the particular pages. This would help to recapitulate thoughts of the children (Larroude, 2004). Moreover, children are explained about difference cultural background of different country. A fresh greeting This activity can be introduced in weekly planning to foster cultural awareness of the children. Materials required No materials are required. Every day of a week is started by teaching new ways to children to say hello, hi or good morning. Furthermore, this is an activity which enables teacher in the classroom of preschool students to have five opportunities to introduce children to great one another is a new way or new language. If native language of one child in the classroom is going to be used, then children is called to help during the process of the activity. On first day of a week for multicultural theme unit, children were taught about welcome language of the folks staying in the United States. How hello is being said by the people in United States is presented to the children in the classroom. Personally, mimicking the accents is viewed to be as fun way to make preschoolers happy and attentive to the classes. The mimic accents of different countries would make more clear presentation. From day 1 to 5, these steps are done to select one member of the preschoolers from different country and motivate them to present to the classroom about their way of saying hi, hello and good morning. This activity would benefit students to enrich their cultural responsiveness. Family tree craft Materials required Piece of paper and scissors (if required) The family tree craft is viewed to be as effective way to make children in the multicultural classroom to recognize and apprehend different types of cultures that can be found in their own families. This activity is regarded as the perfect show to enlighten the mind set of children about cultural differences and diversity. This activity can be implemented in the daily program. Simply, children are told to take home a preprinted family diagram. This tree craft would be drawn in the classroom. This process of tree crafting requires help of the parents to fill names of the great-grandparents, grandparents, places of birth and so on. The families are involved during the activity. First of all, teacher have to find out that if there is lot of diversity within the classroom of not. If there is less rate of diversity, then children are asked by teacher during the weekly multicultural theme unit to discuss their last names to their parents. Moreover, this would help them to trace their roots. Some of the children in the classroom can often tends to discover that their ancestors primarily came to present country from Germany, India, Ireland, Spain, England, etc. Additionally, these details about the ancestors can be incorporated in the family tree. If names of the ancestors are not gathered, then national flags of the countries can be included in the family tree. This activity would be executed at the third day of the weekly multicultural theme unit. There would a plan to trip children to the library. This step is to make children understand more about the countries. Four Development Goals Four developmental goals that are viewed to be pivotal for supporting the anti-bias and relevant curriculum program are prejudice reduction goal, empowerment of school culture, engaging children in intergroup discussions and notification of demographic issues and trends Prejudice reduction goal The prejudice reduction goal is based on focusing how teachers and administration are working together to lessen the prejudices and racial stereotypes. Furthermore, the objective of the goal is to notify that teachers and administration focusing on increasing the democratic behavior, values and attitudes. It is vital for successful execution of multicultural theme unit program is making staff to work together to understand the racial attitudes of the students in the preschool and implement effective plan to alter the racial approaches. According to Derman-Sparks, the feeling and ideas of young children can often progress in to actual prejudice. This is primarily due to the dominant societal biases. The lack of developmental level and limited experience can force young children to grow their misconception of prejudice. At the time of early childhood setting, it is crucial to handle the stereotypes and prejudice for development of children. This goal is based on racism and prejudice. Empowerment of school culture This developmental goal is based on restructuring the organization and structure of the preschool that can benefits children from diversified, language, socioeconomic, ethnic and racial groups are treated equally. This goal is based on culture supporting the ant-bias curriculum program. This goal of empowerment of school structure involves creating different relationships between different groups in the preschool (Ramsey, 2004). It is believed that relationships based on reciprocal and mutual admiration for cultural alterations. It is examined that it is crucial interaction between the children and staff members from diversified racial and ethnic lines are required to be examined and meritoriously present it for benefit of the children. Some of the effective practices that can help to fulfill the goal are by providing achievement among different culture groups, sports participation, labeling practices and special educational program. The application of special education program is viewed to be as multicultural event program which based on enriching the cultural consciousness of the children. Engaging children in intergroup discussions One of the goals of the program is to engaging children in intergroup discussions. This program for discussions would help to promote the cross-cultural communication skills of the children in the preschool. Moreover, this would help to reduce prejudices and biases. According to Gorski, it is vital for multicultural education program to institutionalize inclusivity that would benefit students and children to provide deeper understanding about the world. This developmental goal for multicultural program is based on prejudice. Notification of demographic issues and trends In United States, there have rapid upsurge of rate of language, cultural and ethnic diversity in schools. It is vital for preschools to respond to the drastic alteration towards the rate of diversity. The execution of effective program and strategy is viewed to be as beneficial part for focusing of institutionalization of racism. The pivotal goal for implementation of multicultural education in preschool is to help children and students to comprehend and understand the diverse culture and engage in democratic and diverse humanity (Wilson, 1996). Every child should be provided enough information and knowledge that they should accept the differences of influencing individual individualities. This can reduce the occurrence of racism. Two Teaching Strategies Two of the teaching strategies that effectively support the four developmental goals are importance on contact and content integration strategy. Importance on contact One of the strategies is to emphasis on contact. This is the strategy used in the multicultural theme program initiated by staffs in the classroom. The criteria of the strategy are to make personal sitting arrangement of the students. The statistical data provides vivid information that kindergarten and preschool children are often tends to play with other children in the school of own race. This is the activity and strategy that effectively follows support for the anti-bias curriculum program based on racism, prejudice and racism, prejudice and culture (Gettinger, 2008). The prime purpose of the teacher is to divide the sitting arrangement based on cultural groups. In the setting of preschool, it is beneficial to provide equal status to every single group in the classroom. The cooperative interdependence can be implemented by childhood centers to focus on strategies and activities that encourage children in the preschool. Content integration strategy The content integration strategy is primarily based on Banks five dimension on multicultural education in preschool. The prime focus of the strategy is to notify and apprehend that how teacher in the multicultural educational theme unit used information, data and examples from diversified cultures to support their theories, generalization, principles and pivotal activities. The activities that are implemented in the classroom are regarded as vital part of the process for development of cultural awareness program of the children in the classroom. At the time of early childhood education, it is vital for teacher to use different colors, puppets, multicultural books, multicultural crayons and photographs (Swadener, 1988). One of the primary issues of the execution of the process is the cost of buying the products that are necessary for successful execution of the activities. The help of parents and school administrator becomes pivotal for application of goal. Application of multicultural theme program and participation of parents in the activities The multicultural theme program can be implemented in the preschool for children aged between 3 to 5 years by collection of various articles from magazines and newspapers, development of calendar based on multicultural, collection of related poems, records, books and pictures and finally journal based on holidays and themes about different world. Parents can be included in the activity by inviting them in the classroom as a guest to share related information about the country. If sufficient budget is provided by the generous parents of the children, then American eagle or flag can be glued on these stapled small booklets. This is done at the time of execution of passport craft activity. The parents are required to provide minimal budget to provide booklets to students. The families of the children in a preschool are involved during the family tree activity by explaining them about the process and telling them to fill the tree diagram of their grandparents and so on. In case family tree crafts activity, the families of the children can be asked to trace their roots of the ancestors. Furthermore, this can help to discover the roots of the ancestors and help children to teach about different cultural background. The effective implementation of content integration strategy can be successful with the help of parents. The role of parents is viewed to be crucial for completion of different cultural awareness in the classroom. Evaluation of the Effectiveness During the course of execution of effective multicultural program, parents and staff have is required to take time to discuss best possible solution for individual children or groups. Based on the process of evaluation, variations are required implemented to keep execution of curriculum supportive and reactive for children. The creation of a week multicultural activities is viewed to be as great theme for a preschool with children aged between 3-5 years. In more common sense, it is justified as an approach to teach students in preschool about the diversity morals in the classroom. Consequently, it is beneficial for multicultural educator to embrace other cultural diversified students. This factor of embracing can be used as a means of fostering the individual and academic growth of students. According to Geneva Gay, the perception of multicultural education is viewed to be as different for different people. Moreover, it is worth informing that some of the explanation is primarily based on focusing on the social problems and cultural features of diversified group of people. Geneva gay, the educational expert, stated on the research that there are certain parameters that can be enhanced and enriched by multicultural education such as development of educational and ethnic literacy, value interpretation, personal improvement and multicultural social ability. It is vital for a teacher in a preschool to create effective multicultural theme which enables ward of racism, foster tolerance and demonstrate diversity to child at a very minor age. It is vital evaluate that multicultural program is promoting interactive learning and helping children to achieve their cognitive, physical and linguistic goals. References Gettinger, Michael. (2008). “Applying a response-to-intervention model for early literacy development in low-income children”. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 2(1), 8. Larroude, Boris. (2004). “Multicultural‐Multilingual Group Sessions: Development of Functional Communication”. Topics in Language Disorders, 8(2), 24. Ramsey, Prafulla. (2004). “Teaching and learning in a diverse world: Multicultural education for young children”. The Journal of Multicultural Education, 18(5), 12. Swadener, Eric. (1988). “Implementation of education that is multicultural in early childhood settings: A case study of two day-care programs”. The journal of Urban Review, 8(2), 3. Wilson, Rasmos. (1996). “Education Programs for Preschool Children”. The Journal of Multicultural Education, 12(1), 19. Read More