Preparing Students for Peruvian Guest Speaker

1. Build the background knowledge of students about Peruvian culture. Through

discussions, readings, videos, projects, and group activities. The topic of the interview
will be Peruvian culture as well as quality of life in Peru. Topics that will be covered in
this unit may include ideas about, rights, responsibilities, and the roles of citizens,
transportation, health care, traditions, customs, and culture.
2. Children will have time to discuss and reflect on what they have learned. They may use
anything they have created or written about to formulate questions for our guest speaker.
3. We will introduce students to the idea of a guest speaker and how we will be
communicating with Chris Frey on Skype.
4. We will review rules and expectations of behavior for during the skype guest speaker.
These might include: When My Frey is speaking we are listening. It is respectful to be
attentive and to listen when someone is speaking. Students will be asked to hold any
comments until told and if they have a question to remember to raise their hand. Since we
only have short time with our guest we will remind students that our time is short so we
must pay attention and be listening the best that we can.
5. An explanation of the guest speaker and how we will spend our time will be given. Chris
will speak for 15 minutes then we will spend 5 minute on questions and 10 minutes for
our final reflection.
6. As a class we will determine a criteria for making questions. We will use brainstorming
techniques to help students synthesize questions. (Examples: Must be specific to what we
have been learning. Cannot be answered with yes or no.)
7. Questions will be prepared ahead of time and then collected for review. The day before
the guest speaker is due to speak we will spend 5 to 10 minutes creating questions for our
guest speaker. Students will be asked to create really good questions that cannot be
answered with a yes or no. Questions will be collected and reviewed for appropriateness.
Examples will be provided so students will be able to create strong questions that will
provoke thinking and deeper understanding. (Examples: Why did your family move from
Peru? How have you brought your culture to America? How is Peru the same and
different from North America?)
8. Students will be given the option to either read their question out loud during the
specified time to the quest speaker or either the teacher or another student can.
9. Questions will be given to the guest speaker ahead of time so he can prepare information
for students.
10. On the day of the guest speaker students will be given a graphic organizer to help take
notes during the presentation. Students will be reminded of rules and expectations for
while the guest speaker is talking. Questions will be given to students at the appropriate
time and will be reminded that they must raise their hand to be chosen to ask their
question.
11. After guest speaker has spoken and skype visit has ended students will be asked to reflect
on their experience and what they have learned. Students will be asked to respond to the
question they created.

12. This guide was created by using Asking Powerful Questions written by learnalberta.ca
The document used to guide this document can be found at
http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/ssmt/html/docs/askingpowerfulquestions.pdf

EXAMPLE GRAPHIC ORGANIZER FOR STUDENTS DURING SKYPE GUEST SPEAKER

QUESTION:_______________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
________________________________
ANSWER:________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
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CULTURE

TRADITIONS

COMMUNITY

FAMILY

HEALTH

ECONOMIC

ENVIRONMENT

COMMUNITY

QUALITY OF LIFE