With more than 6,909 known living languages worldwide as of 2011, language represents a crucial component of culture. Teachers can teach children basic words, such as colors and numbers, in different languages and dialects. They can have their class view television programs featuring subtitles or those spoken predominately in English that include simple words from other languages.
Teachers can have themed days where they teach students about a different country and then have them decorate the classroom. Students can put up colored streamers that match the colors of a nation’s flag, draw people and activities common to a country and eat native food prepared by the instructor or brought from home. Teachers can have students dress up in garb common to that country. Holiday themes show differences between religions, allowing students an opportunity to share information about their beliefs.
In classrooms that contain culturally diverse students, teachers can have students write poems or stories about their cultural heritage and share their writings with the class. They can host a show-and-tell day on which students must bring an item from their native or ancestral culture to class and talk about it, which teaches students what items various cultures consider important and their significance to each student.
Instructors should read to young children picture books that highlight the traditions and mythologies of different cultures. Older children should receive reading assignments that focus on the life of a similar-aged child in a different country. Teachers should engage younger students by asking them questions about the story, and older students by giving them quizzes and tests on reading material.
Instructors with little time for hands-on approaches to cultural diversity can show films that highlight the lifestyles of people around the globe. While these activities offer less engagement between teacher and students, films show the reality of cultural diversity more vividly than pictures and storytelling.
Teachers can set up a pen pal exchange with a school in a different country so students can write and send pictures to children in a different culture. Instructors can also use video conferencing or video sharing sites to set up face-to-face exchanges between their students and students from other cultures.