As part of shopping units, you might consider:

1.  Currency is a cultural artifact.  Compare and contrast the people and
symbols put on paper currency. Some countries include political figures,
national heroes while others include authors and artists.  Still others
commemorate natural and man made landmarks on their paper money.  Compare
to US currency and introduce the historical background of development and
symbolism of the euro. You can find really good facsimile images of
currency online.  Currency conversion makes a nice math tie-in and gives
practice using numbers (which students can never practice enough).

2.  Handicraft is another important artifact of countries.  You can examine
artifacts, identify the country they come from and the materials the
individual articles are made of.  (de cuero, de lana, de madera, etc...)
This can be combined with the cultural practice of price bargaining in the
market.

Both of these provide lots of opportunities for developing simple
communicative conversations using many utilitarian memorized expressions
appropriate for novice learners as well as for exploring rich insights into
target cultural perspectives accessible to novice language learners.


On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 11:41 AM, seyda akyuz <seyda226@yahoo.com> wrote:

> My name is Seyda Akyüz and I am currently enrolle
> Hello everyone:
>
> My name is Seyda Akyüz and I am currently enrolled
> in a graduate education program for certification in Secondary Spanish.  I
> will begin student teaching in the spring.  In our methods class, we have
> been discussing
> the 3 P’s: Products, Practices and
> Perspectives, and how to implement cultural topics in our lessons in a
> meaningful way.  I will be teaching my 8th grade students (who are
> studying Spanish for the first time) the Shopping Unit,
> which will include vocabulary on clothing, currency, and telling time. I am
> looking for ideas of cultural practices or artifacts that I might be able
> to
> incorporate into my unit plan with the three P’s in mind? Any idea would
> be welcome
> and greatly appreciated.
>
> Thank you!
> Seyda
>
> -----
> For all FLTEACH information see: http://web.cortland.edu/flteach/
>

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For all FLTEACH information see: http://web.cortland.edu/flteach/