Enrichment World Tour!

LEARNING ABOUT OTHER CULTURES!

First, what is Enrichment? It is a time where the  teachers have an extra conference so they can plan together, and it is from 2:45- 3:30 once a week.  The RTI teachers, ESL teachers, a Special Ed teacher,  Dyslexia teachers, paras, myself, and the counselor go in during this time and teach an enrichment activity. We also have our PE teacher and music teacher who volunteered to be subs if someone was absent. Did I mention they volunteered to fill in even though this is their conference time? We have some rock star teachers at our school.

So you might be wondering what we teach during this time. Since we have so many great teachers teaching during enrichment time we had a plethora of ideas. But one of our goals was to make this easy for teachers who were teaching enrichment. We didn't want this to take anymore of their prescious planning time for their own classes. One night I couldn't sleep and was wondering how we could make the planning process easier for everyone. I began to think about our students and what we could do to broaden their learning experience, and then it hit me. How cool would it be to learn about other cultures? 

We live in a small rural town and we don't have as much exposure to different cultures compared to students who live in larger cities. Originally I was thinking of calling this time Where in the World are the Principals? Kind of like Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?  But when I presented the idea to my principal she suggested Enrichment World Tour since our school theme this year is Rock N' Roll. I thought it was a great idea and that's how the name Enrichment World Tour was born. 

Side Note: I have to give a shout out to my principal, Tiffany Bietz. I come into her office on a frequent basis and I always start off with, " Ok, don't think I am crazy but I have an idea....". She never does and always supports me in my crazy adventures.  She runs with me and makes the crazy idea even stronger! I am grateful for her support!

Back to Enrichment World Tour. Our students will  have a month to learn about a new country. We will teach the students about the people, language, and the different things that make the country unique. 

One thing that did concern me was how we were going to keep the students interested. We were only going to be having a lesson once a week. How could we keep it exciting and interesting for the other 4 days a week? That's when I came up with the idea for a hall way transformation or more like a nook transformation. I found the signs in the picture below and thought it would be perfect. My husband David , who is also a 3rd grade teacher at my school, created the stage. We then added artifacts, information, student work (not pictured), and pictures that are all about Australia. 

I will be posting about each country we tour at the end of the 4 weeks. Our first stop is Australia! Next stop will be Brazil! Stay tuned!

Special Thanks To: