Create a Culture offers an exciting array of activities that will immerse students in all the elements that combine to make up a culture. The main objective is to increase students' understanding of what makes cultures unique, as well as to help them see and appreciate the similarities and difference that exist among cultures. By designing a fictitious culture and deciding its history, students will learn how cultures develop, change, and grow.

This unit is designed for cooperative learning groups of three to five students each. Work is done during class and as homework. The project can be completed in four to six weeks, depending on how time is used and how many activities are assigned.

Create a Culture is divided into four sections:

• Making Decisions
• Creating the Culture
• Project Ideas
• Culminating Activities

Making Decisions
These activities encourage brainstorming and note taking within each group. Students plan their ficititious cultures by using maps, geography texts, almanacs, encyclopedias, and atlases to answer questions in this section and to construct each culture's history and travels. Completing this section and the concluding group worksheets will enable students to move on to the next section of the project.

Creating the Culture
With these pages, the students of each group to being to construct how their new culture operates by reading about real cultures and applying the concepts to their fictitious one. As the teacher, you may decide to assign all of the activities included or to allow students to work on the sections they find most interesting and most applicable to their chosen time period or habitat. The section end with directions for reporting on the created culture by writing an "archaeological document."

Project Ideas
This section provides a chance for students to demonstrate their created cultures through multimedia and three-dimensional models, presentations, and other projects. You can imagine these activities in three different ways:

• Have each group do all of the projects provided. This will require each student to take responsibility for several projects.
• Decide how many projects you want each student to complete and then select the specific projects you want each group to do. You could have every group do the same projects or give different projects to each group.
• Give all the project sheets to each group and let the students decide which ones they will do. You might also require all groups to do a particular project and then let each group choose its additional projects.

Whatever you decide, you should ensure that each student group uses a variety of project ideas so that the final cultural displays are more interesting. Students should be guided toward choosing the projects that showcase their talents as well as expand their skills.

Culminating Activities
This section includes directions for presenting each group's work to classmates, other students, family members, and people in the community. The teacher may use this section to help students plan an open house and/or displays for their own culture museum. Formats for letters inviting guests to the open house are provided. You may also want to add a mini-lesson on writing letter and addressing envelopes.