<p> Talking Cultures</p><p>The United Kingdom’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. A registered charity: 209131 (England and Wales) SC037733 (Scotland). Talking cultures </p><p>What is Talking Cultures?</p><p>This project celebrates the cultural differences in the world and at the same time gives young people an opportunity to compare other cultures with their own through the tasks in the teacher’s pack.</p><p>How does it work? AIM: To promote intercultural Talking Cultures is a series of mini-rolling projects using an dialogue through mini- intercultural teacher’s pack containing ten units each one projects that lead to a focussing on a specific area of culture. Each unit has a series of wiki that represents your country. tasks that lead to the production of a wiki component, in cooperation with a partner school. </p><p>The topics have been selected with a teenage audience in mind and are skills focussed to build up the confidence of the learners. A wide variety of activities and teaching techniques have also been incorporated to sustain interest in the project. The teachers are provided with lesson plans that can be used as they are or adapted to suit their particular class. Also, some sections require the teacher or learners to do some research before the class which allows for more personalization of the topic. Extra materials on the topics can be found at the following British Council websites: http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-themes-archive-page.htm http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/</p><p>What do teachers need to do?</p><p>Teachers will get the contact details of a teacher from another school.</p><p>Teachers will contact their partner school teacher and agree on the project timetable.</p><p>Teachers will be assigned as administrators on the wiki and they will have to organize their students to work on the wiki collaboratively.</p><p>By the end of the project, teachers will have produced the wiki in cooperation with their students and their partner schools within the agreed deadline.</p><p>Page 2 of 4 Talking cultures </p><p>Project outline Level: The children should be What is it about? elementary level and above, capable of writing short texts Target group: 13-14 years old such as postcards with teacher support Level: (A2/B1CEF levels)</p><p>This pack contains materials for the Talking Cultures project. This includes:  10 lesson plans with student handouts and teaching notes  Links to British Council podcasts and other online materials</p><p> Link to the Wiki to display the project outcome These materials can be taught in any order, but we recommend that the class biography is done last as it is seen as a consolidation lesson. Each lesson plan involves the learners using a range of skills and a final wiki product is produced. In some cases the topic may need to be done over more than one lesson to allow the students to do some research. A space on the wiki is allocated to each topic product. Group work is encouraged and the teacher may have to select the best work to go onto the wiki.</p><p>What do the students study? What do they produce?</p><p>Topics Mini-projects Food  Write a recipe Our country  Write a place description Famous people  Write a profile Festivals  Design a poster Cartoons and animation  Design a comic strip Village life  Write an e-mail Music  Select the best musicians Holidays  Write a postcard Sports  Describe a sport Class biography  Write a profile of a classmate</p><p>Page 3 of 4 Talking cultures </p><p>Technical requirements</p><p>Since wikis exist online, teachers and students must have Internet access. The wiki service is free of charge.</p><p>This project will include three primary tasks for teachers: 1. Editing and updating: Teachers should be able to update the wiki within agreed deadlines 2. Monitoring and moderating: Teachers should be able to access the wiki on a regular basis, monitor and moderate their students’ posts 3. Project work: Teachers should be able to ensure that the work is neat and organized to be shared with other participating schools.</p><p>Page 4 of 4</p>