Date: August 5th, 1998

Grade Level: K-12 4th grade emphasis

Subject:  Interdisciplinary:Social Studies, Math, Language Arts

Duration: 3, 20-minute periods or more

Overview: This is muticultural graphing activity.

Purpose:   To develop a sense of interdependence with people who live in other
countries and to appreciate that many people in far away places contribute
greatly to our well being and lifestyle.

Objective(s):

Students will:

1. Identify things they use everyday that were made outside of the United States.
2. Write identifying information about the item on a color coded tag.
3. Assemble these tags into a bar graph by country.
4. Locate each country on a world map or globe.
5. Make comparisons and draw conclusions from the bar graph when it is assembled.

Resources/Materials:   Printed identification tags which students are to fill out.

Activities and Procedures:

Introductory Lesson:

Ask students if they know where their shoes were made.
List guesses.  Have students take off their shoes and see if they
can find out where they were made.  List the countries identified by students.
Have students stand in lines for each country to make a living bar graph.  Ask
students if they were surprised by these results.  Encourage students to think
about other things they use everyday.  Do they know where it was made?
Distribute color-coded tags and explain that they will be used to make a graph
that shows where things we use everyday are made.  Show students examples from
each category and explain how tags are to be completed and when they are to be
returned.  Encourage students to find as many different things from as many
different countries as possible.

Second class session:

When students return their tags they will be sorted by country
and color.  Each student can then be given a group of tags to be glued onto a
strip of adding machine tape for the graph.  Students or the teacher will make
a label for each country.  Strips will then be placed above and/or below the
country name to form a bar graph.

Third class session:

Ask students to make observations and write down questions about the graph.
If this is a whole school activity walk around the building and look at other class graphs.
Make observations and comparisons about these graphs.

Extensions:

Students may bring in one item to show the class and tell where
it was made and show the location of the country on a map or globe, and if
appropriate they may also tell how they got it and use it. Students may be
encouraged to talk to parents and grandparents or other relatives about items
they may have brought from a foreign country or collections they have.  These
items may have interesting stories for students to share.  Students and
faculty may bring in items to be displayed with labels identifying their
country of origin.

Assessment:

Observe students..

Did students learn to locate data regarding country of origin on different types of objects?
Did students follow directions in completing tags?
Were students able to assemble a bar graph?
Were students able to read a bar graph and obtain data from it?
Were students able to locate countries on a map or globe?
Did students make comparisons and draw conclusions from the bar graph?

Useful Internet Resources:

Resources on the Internet can be found by searching country names; products eg. tea, coffee;
company names, eg Nike; issues, eg. child labor; and the U.S. State Department for trade information.