Teacher's Guide: the Forums
Introduction
The forums are perhaps the most important component of Cultura. They are its core and cement. They are the central element which provides a continuous thread through all the modules. Forums are where students enter into a real dialogue with their cultural partners, exchanging viewpoints, asking questions and answering each other's questions, trying to make sense together of the materials they analyze, thus cooperatively constructing an understanding of each other's culture.
After students from each partnering school have analyzed the materials contained in the different modules first on their own and then as a class, they systematically enter the forums where they exchange their observations with their counterparts. These forums are attached to every single module, and within each module, to specific areas of investigation, whether it is a word, a sentence or a situation (as in the Questionnaires Module), whether it is a specific scene from the films (as in the Film Module), whether it is a topic addressed by the news media (as in the Newsstand Module), etc.
In addition to the forums that are directly attached to the questionnaires and all the other modules, you can open any other that you think might be useful and appropriate. You might want to open a forum:
- that focuses on important current events in one or the other country (elections, for example) or an international event
- where students would raise paradoxes that emerge from reading across several on-line forums (ex: why in certain contexts and situations the French seem more aggressive or confrontational and less in others)
- in which students could choose their topic (a “coffee break” type of forum where students write about any subject they want, and possibly in the language of their choosing)
Back to The Core Guide | Managing the forums | Activities of the forums