Daily Life in Four Communities

Suggested Activities

In this challenge, students examine visual images (photographs and video clips) of daily life to learn of the different ways selected communities in Tunisia, Peru, India and Ukraine contribute to the quality of life for their citizens. In preparation for this activity, assemble collections of images of daily life in each community from books, magazines, travel brochures, websites and videos. A search of Google™ Image Search using the country and the topic (e.g., "India health care," "Tunisia people," "Peru safety," or "Ukraine transportation") will generally produce a generous supply of photographs, although searching by specific community within these countries produces limited results.

You may wish to refer to The Most Important Factors (Critical Challenge) to introduce students to, and list, the factors that contribute to quality of life. Otherwise, create a list such as the one suggested below, of the most important contributing factors:

Sample list of contributing factors:

• Food and water
• Clothing and shelter
• Friends and family
• Job or source of money to buy necessary things
• Schooling to be able to read and write
• Freedom to act and ability to get around (transportation)
• Opportunities to do interesting things
• Safety and protection
• Health care.

Encourage students to be detectives by looking for evidence of these factors in the collections of images assembled for each community. For demonstration purposes, select a simple image with a clear, dominant action or focal point. You may want first to help students decipher the main action or event in the image before looking for clues about quality of life. See Investigating Pictures (Modelling the Tools) for detailed suggestions on how to teach and assess the tools for interpreting the main ideas from an image.

When the main focus of the image has been ascertained, direct students to focus on one contributing factor, perhaps food. Invite students to offer as many clues as they can find from the image to describe how this basic necessity is made available in this community. Record their conclusions and the evidence (clues). Repeat the procedure with the other contributing factors until all relevant information about quality of life has been extracted from the sample image. You may want to adapt the strategies and chart for Collecting Information (Support Material) to structure and assess this activity.

Distribute the image collection for each community to a different group of students, instructing the group to determine the main focus of each image and then to uncover evidence about the presence of the "quality of life" factors for their community. You may want to provide copies of the charts mentioned above to help students organize and record their findings. When the groups have finished their picture studies, arrange for them to share their findings with the rest of the class. As suggested below, you may want to create a large wall chart upon which students record their conclusions for each of the contributing factors. To assist each group in organizing this information for presentation, you may want to adapt the comparative chart and strategies found in Collecting Information (Support Material).

As an alternative or in addition to the wall chart, organize students in groups to create a pictorial web illustrating how each community provides for one of the contributing factors. The focal point of each web would be an illustration of the assigned factor and each of the prongs of the web would cluster around one of the four communities. Encourage students to annotate their web and supplement their picture study with information from an encyclopedia or textbook. Assist students in learning to find the relevant information by using keywords or the index.