Table of Contents
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What's this lesson all about?
This lesson is a great follow up for the "Creating a Clan" lesson. The kids get into their clans and come up with a short presentation for the other groups. This is how we introduce the kids to the camera that we use to record them throughout the semester. This lesson can also be done without filming the students, as they can simply present to each group without a recording.
What is Ethnography?
Ethnography is the process of documenting cultures that are still existent. Anthropologists usually do so through means of pictures, videos, and audio recordings as well as written observations. We call going into the field participant observation.
Ethnography is a part of cultural anthropology that helps the students understand what it is that cultural anthropologists actually do. This is a great follow up lesson for the "Creating Clans" activity, because it puts anthropology into action in a fun and understandable way. This is a common activity that we implement the second week of our partnership.
A big thanks to Dr. William Dressler for letting us use pictures from his research in Brazil in our presentation.
What is Ethnography?
Ethnography is the process of documenting cultures that are still existent. Anthropologists usually do so through means of pictures, videos, and audio recordings as well as written observations. We call going into the field participant observation.
Ethnography is a part of cultural anthropology that helps the students understand what it is that cultural anthropologists actually do. This is a great follow up lesson for the "Creating Clans" activity, because it puts anthropology into action in a fun and understandable way. This is a common activity that we implement the second week of our partnership.
A big thanks to Dr. William Dressler for letting us use pictures from his research in Brazil in our presentation.
This is the finished product of the video created by Hannah Tytus of the students of Arcadia for our ethnography lesson. Listen as students explain different aspects of their culture. Spring 2017
Documenting Culture: What is Ethnography? Lesson Plan, Version 1
by Kelsey Kennedy
Third, Fourth, and Fifth Graders
Seven Sessions
Lesson: Documenting Culture
Materials Needed:
Review:
Focus:
Objectives:
Guided Practice:
Independent Practice (Activity):
Review:
Third, Fourth, and Fifth Graders
Seven Sessions
Lesson: Documenting Culture
Materials Needed:
- Boxes – washable markers, crayons, pencils
- Poster board that acted as the flag from the first week
- Video Camera
Review:
- Review knowledge from the prior week
- What is Anthropology?
- What is Culture?
- Reviewing CLAP: The four sub-fields
Focus:
- What is an Ethnography?
- How do we document culture using an ethnography?
- How do we view cultures we don’t understand?
Objectives:
- Understand the importance of ethnography
- Ethnography: way in which anthropologists study and teach others about cultures.
- Work as a group to present their clans
- Watch and Listen to the other clan talk about their culture
- Learn what ethnocentrism is
- Ethnocentrism: when people judge another culture by the standards and beliefs of their own culture
Guided Practice:
- Ask students to define culture, from last week.
Independent Practice (Activity):
- Each group will finish their flag from last week
- They will prepare a five-minute presentation about their clan. For Example, the clothes they wear, beliefs, rites of passage, etc.
Review:
- Ethnographers must live with their culture of study for a long period of time. They may have to learn a new language in the process. It is important to always be kind.
- How can you describe another culture without being ethnocentric?
- What did you learn about the other clans in your class?
Documenting Culture: What is Ethnography? Lesson Plan, Version 2
by Mary Gibler
Third Grade
Eight Sessions
Lesson : Documenting Culture
Previous lesson: Creating Culture
Materials:
Focus:
Objectives:
Guided Practice:
Independent Practice (Activities):
Review:
Third Grade
Eight Sessions
Lesson : Documenting Culture
Previous lesson: Creating Culture
Materials:
- Paper
- Pens or Pencils
Focus:
- Review CLAP
- What is ethnography?
Objectives:
- Students will learn about ethnography
- Ethnography: writing about people and their cultures
- Students will learn about ethnographic methods
- Participant observation: being a part of the culture and living with them while you observe and write about them
- Interviewing members of the culture
- Students will attempt to describe another culture
- Students will learn about the different types of ethnographies
- Articles, books, pictures, documentaries
Guided Practice:
- Give students pictures of things from different cultures (examples in the powerpoint)
- Help them describe the cultural information in the picture.
Independent Practice (Activities):
- First activity
- Students will elect one representative from their clan.
- They will send their representative to the other clans to interview them about their cultures and customs.
- Representatives will return to their groups to tell them about the other clans.
- Students will need a worksheet with questions to ask.
- Alternative Activity:
- Teacher will pick one student and take the student right outside of the classroom.
- Teacher will change some part of their appearance (take off their jacket, hair up in a ponytail, shoe untied, etc.).
- The students will guess what has changed. The student that gets it right will be the next person that’s “ it.”
- This activity demonstrates how we see “culture” and our instinctual knowledge of culture.
Review:
- What is ethnography?
- How do ethnographers do their research?
- What did you learn about the other clan (or) what did you learn about how people display culture?
Downloadable Content
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For more information and our own insider perspective on teaching Ethnography lessons, check out our blog!
- Ethnography in Action @ TMSE;
- Ethnography at TMSE-Week 2 by Mary Gibler
- WEEK 2 AT TMSE – ETHNOGRAPHY BY ROCHELLE WILLIAMSON
- Ethnography @ Arcadia! by Kelsey Kennedy
- Ethnography of West Africa-TMSE
- Ethnography at Arcadia
- Becoming Ethnographers
- Week 2: Cultural Anthropology
- September 17th, 2013: Ethnography
Gallery
Below is a gallery of pictures and a video from our Documenting Cultures lessons. The students are presenting their clan rituals, beliefs, and rites of passage while a student teacher records. At Tuscaloosa Magnet School Elementary this year, they did a new and interesting activity. A student was asked to go outside and change one part of their outfit, like their shoes untied. When they returned to the classroom, the students had to guess what part of them was different. This worked because it demonstrated how a society has cultural rules that we know and follow, even if we're not consciously thinking of them.