As world populations become increasingly connected, teaching global awareness is becoming more important. Many jobs focus on issues that affect global communities and require mindfulness about the similarities and differences of life experiences around the world. Prepare your students for participation in our international community now by integrating global awareness into your lessons using Annenberg Learner resources. Teaching global awareness in your classroom should feel seamless, no matter what subject you teach.
Literature and Language Arts
Part of living in a global community is learning strong conversational skills that include valuing each other’s strengths, listening well, and explaining thinking clearly. Ms. Bomer models these behaviors as she guides her 5th graders in thoughtful discussions of the text they read. See Engaging With Literature, program 2, “Voices in the Conversation.”
Find teaching strategies for reading works by American authors with diverse ethnic backgrounds in Teaching Multicultural Literature: A Workshop for the Middle Grades.
Enhance students’ understanding of literary texts using cultural artifacts that provide background knowledge for the stories they read in Artifacts & Fiction. For example, in workshop 6, “Cultural Geography,” students compare photographs and excerpts from Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street to understand cultural divisions in contemporary Chicago neighborhoods.
Mathematics
Fourth graders in a bilingual classroom use a Valentine’s Day card exchange to work on mathematical concepts and problem solving skills in Teaching Math: A Video Library, K-4, program 42. The students respectfully communicate in Spanish and English during the lesson. Use the cards as an opportunity for students to share expressions in their native languages.
Talk about genetic resistance as a global issue, and provide case studies. Against All Odds: Inside Statistics, program 29, “Inference for Two-Way Tables,” focuses on the research of the series host Dr. Pardis Sabeti. She uses statistical tools to examine possible genetic resistance to deadly Lassa fever in West Africa.
Integrate global awareness into lessons exploring the mathematical concepts of connectivity and networks, from Mathematics Illuminated, unit 11. This unit provides insights into various ways life is connected, from social networks to ecosystems. The video starts with 16th century poet John Donne’s concept that “no man is an island entire of itself.”
Science
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science, session 7, is about energy flow in communities. Define community and examine energy flow within a community. Take these lessons a step further by providing students opportunities to explore energy flow among organisms in communities around the world.
Read about our earliest common ancestors to learn what makes us all human in Rediscovering Biology, unit 9, “Human Evolution.” Anthropologist Ian Tattersall explains how modern humans developed and migrated from Africa to populate the globe.
Teach students how demographers study human population dynamics by tackling questions on how population growth affects the environment and whether or not urbanization is a threat to humans’ quality of life. Go to The Habitable Planet, unit 5, “Human Population Dynamics.”
More resources from our collection that can be used to support global awareness in your lessons:
Art Through Time: A Global View
Invitation to World Literature
The Economics Classroom, workshop 5, “Trading Globally”
Economics U$A, unit 27, “International Trade”
Human Geography: People, Places, and Change
Social Studies in Action Library, grades K-12
The Power of Place: Geography for the 21st Century
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