MY NAME AROUND THE WORLDA social studies project for grades 2-3

BASIC PREMISE Students at a Korean International school will find out what

their English name means as well as what their Korean name means.

Students will create an acrostic poem incorporating their name.

Children will put their name, poem and other supporting information on a poster.

Students will also interview their parents, asking them what motivated them to give them the name they did.

At the end, pictures of their posters along with their video/audio interviews will be put onto a wiki to be shared with the world.

The entire length of this project will be 4 weeks for Grade 3 students and 6 weeks for Grade 2

MEANING OF YOUR NAME Grade 2-3 students at a Korean International

school are tasked to find out what their name means in Korean and what it means in English

Students are expected to use Internet resources to find out what their name means in each language (i.e. baby names databases). This will teach the students important information

literacy and research skills.

ACROSTIC POEM Scaffolding off of a recently completed

unit on adjectives, students will create an acrostic poem based on their name. Creating a cross-curricular link to English

class Develops the students’ creativity skills

CULTURAL ORIGIN AND PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

Since this will be put onto a wiki that can be accessed by anyone, it is very important for the students to put the ethnic background of the name, giving it a cultural context. Also, last names should NEVER appear on the poster.

The student should also put down a pronunciation guide for their name, to make it easy for people to know how say their name accurately.

CELEBRITIES/HISTORICAL FIGURES Students should research their name and find out if there are

any current celebrities or historical figures that share their name. This will help to further develop the children's’ informational

literacy Students should find out their celebrities’ notable

accomplishments and include that on their poster. They should include at least one celebrity/historical figure.

If they cannot find a famous person, they can instead, include notable or interesting member of their family and any of their notable accomplishments, though it should be communicated to the students that this is not preferred.

BABY PHOTOS Students should include at least 3 photos of

themselves: one as a baby, one as a younger child, and a recent photo.

Since these photos will be posted on the internet and searcable by the general public, students have the option of drawing pictures of themselves growing up instead of including photos. These photos will help reinforce the connection

between this project and the real world.

POSTER Students will put all of this information

on a poster, trying to create an eye catching layout. This will help develop their creativity as

they try to create an imaginative poster display.

INTERVIEWS WITH MOTHER/FATHER Students will interview their parents and ask them 3 questions

about their name and how they came up with it. Some questions include: Why did you give me this name? What hopes did you have for me when you gave me this name? Does any other member of our family share this name? If so, who? What other names did you consider?

Students will visually record their interviews, edit the resulting video and submit it as a part of the project. This helps raise students’ media literacy as they learn how to work with

basic video editing softward (i.e. Movie Maker) and ICT literacy, as they work with recording equipment and computers.

POSTER PRESENTATION AND PEER REVIEW

Students will orally present their poster to the class.

Students will also show their video interview to the class as well.

Students will peer review their classmates’ posters and videos, comprising of 50% of their final grade. Teacher assessment comprises the other 50%. Giving the project multifaceted assessment.

POST TO WIKI After the presentation and assessment,

the students will submit their assignment to the teacher who will post them onto Wikispaces or PBWorks.

The teacher will then post a link to the iEARN collaboration center as well as the teachers sub-reddit.