Language and Culture Book Kits and Global Story Boxes

Request a Language and Culture Kit Now
Request a Global Story Box Now

Worlds of Words, with assistance from the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL), developed Language and Culture Kits for use in the classroom. Though intended for kindergarten to eighth grade, we found that these kits were most useful in classrooms from third to eighth grade. With inspiration and assistance from CREATE, a project to redesign the College of Education’s early childhood teacher preparation program, we put together Global Story Boxes for the K-2 classroom. Both the Language and Culture Kits and the Global Story Boxes come with a resource notebook that provides strategies and support on how to best use the literature contained in the kits. The Global Story Box notebook has strategies especially adapted for the K-2 classroom. Except for lists of the specific literature and resources unique to each country’s culture, the notebook is the same for all kits. This is true for the story box notebooks as well. We have made the contents of the notebook for both the kit and story boxes available on line to assist in planning prior to actually checking out a kit. All sections are downloadable. The annotated book lists for each notebook are also viewable online.

Language and Culture Kits

Lang&CultKit

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Welcome Download

Guidelines for Language and Culture Kits Download

Table of Contents Download

Resources

•Resources and web links
Arabic-Speaking Countries and Cultures
Chinese

•Downloadable Maps

List of Kit Contents

Book Synopses
Arabic-Speaking Countries & Cultures Book & Resource List
Mandarin/China Language and Culture Kit Book List
Japanese/Japan Language and Culture Kit Book List
Hangul/Korea Language and Culture Kit Book List
Portuguese/Brazil Language and Culture Kit Book List
Spanish/Mexico Language and Culture Kit
Hopi & Navajo/American Indians of the Southwest Language and Culture Kit
Spanish/Chile & Peru Language and Culture Kit
American Sign Language/Deaf Culture Language and Culture Kit
Dinka/East Africa Language and Culture Kit
Finnish/Finland Language and Culture Kit
Hindi/India Language and Culture Kit
Nepali/Nepal & Bhutan Language and Culture Kit
Maori/New Zealand Language and Culture Kit
Russian/Russia Language and Culture Kit

Frame for a World View

• Worlds of Words Vision Download
• Begler Model – Global Culture: First Steps toward Understanding Download
• Global and Intercultural Understanding Download
• Critical Inquiry and Global Literature Download
• Evaluating Authenticity Download
• Rubric: Global Competencies  Download
• Rubric: Student Friendly Global Competencies  Download
• Rubric: “I can . . .” Global Competencies  Download

Strategies for Responding to Literature

• Overview  Download
• Venn Diagrams  Download
• Consensus Board  Download
• Literature Circles with information on shared texts  Download
• Save the Last Word for Me  Download
• Cultural X-Rays  Download
• Story Ray  Download
• Sketch-to-Stretch  Download
• Anomalies, Graffiti Board, Webbing What’s on Your Mind Download
• Book Pass Download

Reference Articles

• Critically Reading the Word and the World  Download
• Encouraging Reflection through Graffiti Boards and Literature Circles  Download
• Engaging Students with the Unfamiliar  Download
• Exploring Culture through Literature Written in Unfamiliar Languages  Download
• Mapping Our Understandings  Download
• Encouraging Symbolic Thinking Through Literature  Download
• Encouraging Intertextual Thinking in the Classroom  Download
• Exploring Flow Charts as a Tool for Thinking  Download
• Creating a Context for Understanding in Literature Circles  Download

Global Story Boxes

Story Box

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Welcome Download

Book Synopses

American Indians of the Southwest Global Story Box
Caribbean Global Story Box
China Global Story Box
East Africa Global Story Box
France Global Story Box
India Global Story Box
Mexican-American Story Box
Mexico Global Story Box
Puerto Rico Global Story Box
South Korea Global Story Box
Southwest Book Synopsis Global Story Box
West Africa Global Story Box

Notebook Resources

Table of Contents for Global Story Boxes Notebook
WOW vision
Evaluating Authenticity
Cultural Understanding
Critical Literacy and Global Literature
Global Competencies-I Can
Global Competentcies
Globally Competentcies Student Friendly
Global Story Box Invitations
Sharing Global Story Boxes in the Classroom
Strategies for Sharing Literature
Graffiti BoardEC
Reader Response Strategies EC
Save the Last WordEC

5 thoughts on “Language and Culture Book Kits and Global Story Boxes

  1. As a former English teacher, I’m very impressed with your strategies. OpEd works with poor children in Africa and Asia and I would like to chat with you about your materials. Presently we are in @1000 schools and I’m currently scoping the curriculum for 8th grade, with an eye to developing literacy in English.

  2. Marie c vazquez says:

    Would you be willing to send a culture kit to a NYC Public elementary school. We are located in Corona. This would be used for a grade wide unit on World Cultures beginning end of January?

    Thank you

    Marie Vazquez
    PS 143
    Corona, NY 11368

  3. Jessica Armstrong says:

    I’m interested in purchasing a France Global Story kit but couldn’t find the price or if that was even possible. How do I go about finding that information?

    • Hi Jessica,

      We loan our global story boxes to classroom teachers in the Tucson area. We do not sell them, but we can get you an updated list of the contents. We try to make sure the resources in each kit is available for purchase in the U.S. and so you should be able to find most of them at your local bookstore. I’m not sure if this is the most updated list, but the book synopses can be found at https://wowlit.org/links/booklists/global-story-box-book-synopses/5/. Also, if you would like information from the resource kit, all those are in the section on the current page just above the comments. If you have additional questions, please feel free to email us at wow@email.arizona.edu.

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