Research Project Homes Around the World

In class we will begin learning about the homes people live in from countries around the world.  The purpose of this research project is for our kids to learn how to go out and find information on a topic.  They will then take what they have learned, create a presentation and teach the rest of the class.  In this case, I assigned them a country to research and gave them the focus for their research, just research the homes.  

They will take notes in class using a book and then take what they have learned in the book to find more information on websites.  Here is what I wrote on their notesheet.

Directions: Read information about the homes people create in different parts of the world.  Use books and websites to learn as much as you can about how the people of your country create their homes.  Think about...

What are the homes called?

What are the homes made from?

Where do groups of people live?

How are the homes set up inside?

                 Are there different kinds of houses you can put as examples?

Find terrific images of their homes and create a Keynote presentation to share with the class.  You should have a minimum of three slides.  Be creative and learn how to make your slides interesting looking.  Think about the information you are sharing.  If it interests you, someone will find it interesting if you show them the right way!

We will be reasearching twenty-three different countries

Kenya, South Korea, China, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Ireland, Argentian, Chile, Venezuela, Australia, Italy, Spain, Finland, Germany, Iran, Pakistan, Isreal, Afghanistan, Vietname, South Africa, Ethiopia, Indonesia

Here are a few websites helpers to get you started:

Type into Safari...homes or houses in _____the name of your country.  

If you do an image search, be sure the visit the webpage to read information on that type of house.

Once you learn the name for the style of the house, enter that into the Safari search to learn more about that type of home.

Shelter On LIne (not every country here but a few that we are reseaching)

http://www.shelterpub.com/_wonderful_houses/wh-toc.html  

Culture Grams

Use this site, enter your country and look on the sidebar--you will see a part for housing. Not every country is on this site but there are a lot.  To use this site you must enter the Username 64-3453 password bigchalk

http://online.culturegrams.com/