We’ve selected the Top Ten SOS Instructional Strategies for Global Citizenship to inspire you and your students to tackle big ideas and issues. Use these strategies to get your students involved in the global opportunities and challenges facing us today.
Investigating the World
Visual Walkabout
Gives students a sneak peek of an upcoming unit using a gallery of images you can share on the classroom wall or digitally. This will help students make connections and ask questions on critical topics.
The Discovery Atlas Interactive Map comes alive in this strategy, which is used to help students explore and research cultures, governments, history, and nature around the world.
Read All About It
Let students practice making the connections between a main idea and supporting details with the Read All About It instructional strategy. Write a catchy headline about a current event and have students write a summary statement using evidence from a media clip and its transcript.
Surround Sound
This versatile strategy makes use of sound effects to create a specific environment or mood. By focusing on the sound only, students use their auditory sense to interpret information and imagine an event.
Now Screening
Pair a series of images and essential questions for a unit of study and give students a chance to make predictions and connections at the beginning of the unit. Revisit the images and essential questions as students build new knowledge.
Find educator-facing videos and downloadable PDFs for each strategy in our SOS Top 10: Global Citizenship Studio Board!
Recognizing Perspectives
Instagramming
An Insta is worth a thousand words. Have students create Instagram-style posts in response to a DE video, then let them “post” and respond to each other’s Instagramming.
Multiple Perspectives
Considering Multiple Perspectives is a critical component of global citizenship. This powerful exercise asks students to assume a point of view from an image or video and write a narrative from that perspective.
They Said What?
This strategy will appeal to students who gravitate towards dialogue or graphic novels. Students consider two characters in an image and create the dialogue — They Said What? — that can be logically inferred from the image or prior knowledge about the content.
Communicating Ideas
PechaKucha
20 slides / 20 seconds each. That’s it. PechaKucha prescribes the format, you define the topic, and students find the images for a timed presentation. This strategy hones the ability to identify key ideas and details and to summarize.
XO Let's Go
Based on everyone’s favorite game of X and O, this tic-tac-toe adaptation is still all about taking turns and communicating effectively. Players earn Xs and Os by listening as their partner discusses what they learned—no repeats!