All Around This World–World Cultures Classroom Kit Frequently Asked Questions

All Around This World’s World Cultures Curriculum takes the AATW parent/child materials to 3-9 year-olds in their school classrooms. The materials provide a practical guide and inspiration for any classroom teacher to explore many countries and cultures. All Around This World uses music as “a way in,” enabling students to connect with people who may seem different through the songs they sing. After building a musical bond students are open to learning more and more about their new friends.

Any classroom teacher may use the AATW World Cultures Curriculum with his or her students; no special musical experience or even inclination is required. (AATW’s World Cultures Curriculum can complement but would not replace a music instruction program.) Approximately each week the classroom teacher will lead his or her students through a period of about 45 minutes of “engagement”–singing songs from the AATW CDs with the students, then diving head-first into the weekly “experience” of a dance, a celebration of a local holiday or some other participatory project. Throughout the rest of the week, the teaches will work with students in whatever makes the most sense in that classroom, balancing the moments of multi-sensory engagement with context about that season’s countries and cultures. If a classroom commits fully to the material, students will even pursue season-long projects relating to the countries and cultures in the region at hand and work toward a season-ending presentation that may welcome other classrooms from their school or even their parents and community members into their learning. All curriculum materials will be available to teachers in both primary and early elementary classrooms, though teachers of “big kids”–approximately 5-9 year olds–will be especially successful with the dances, festival celebrations and other hands-on projects the curriculum will provide.

What is special about All Around This World’s music?
All Around This World never talks down to kids or their grownups. All Around This World shares global music with kids in a way that simultaneously engages all, from the tiniest of tiny infants to the wisest and most well-traveled adults. Jay developed the music based on years of meticulous musical and cultural research–conducted with the support of global musicians, educators and ethnomusicologists. The approximately 250 songs that are part of the three year AATW curriculum originate from the global cultures that the music class explores. [Learn about All Around This World’s music.] These are not “kids songs,” but music for adults that Jay has translated and rearranged, taking tremendous care to maintain each song’s musical essence and cultural narrative while still creating music that kids can enjoy from the very first note.

Jay has been teaching AATW parent-child classes, best for infants to 5 year-olds and their grownups, in his Philadelphia classroom since 2009. [See what parents and educators are saying about All Around This World classes.] In the spring of 2013 he started testing the AATW program as a “big kids” world cultures program in a 6-9 year-old classroom at the Philadelphia Montessori Charter School, beginning with AATW’s West Asia and the Middle East season. It was a hit! Jay has been teaching AATW Latin America material since the start of the school year, and will be moving on to AATW Africa this spring. AATW is currently working with a handful of schools around the U.S. that are engaged in a pilot program to test the curriculum in a variety of classroom contexts. Contact AATW for details.

What does a “classroom kit” include?

TAKE A TOUR OF THE ALL AROUND THIS WORLD: LATIN AMERICA CLASSROOM KIT.

Each AATW “season” of material starts with a CD that consists of two dozen or more songs that AATW founder and lead teacher Jay Sand has adapted to introduce your students to a geographic region of the world and includes 12 weeks of lessons through which your students will meet many of the region’s cultures through traditional dances and cultural celebrations. (Your class can enjoy each lesson over the course of a single week or take longer to dig deeper.) The pilot program will take us to Latin America, specifically introducing countries and cultures from South America, Central America and Mexico.

With your classroom kit you will receive materials that you can use all season long, like….

• 25 individual download codes for CDs (listen to the songs on the AATW: Latin America CD here)–consider the CD to be the core of your program: the “textbook!”
• Overview of Latin America and an introduction to the countries we’re going to “visit” over the course of the season (AATW–Latin America country-by-country overview (2014)) including background information about each song on the CD (AATW-Latin-America-Song-by-Song-overview)
• Access to “sing-along” videos–KARAOKE! (example: “La Guacamaya”)
• Access to a teacher training video for each song (example: “Our Story May Be Sad”)
• Song-by-song lyrics printouts (AATW–Latin America lyrics printout example)
• High def printable jpg of All Around This World Latin America musical map

You will also receive materials that you can use in your classroom each week throughout the season.

• 12 week-by-week lesson guides, detailing everything that’s on tap for that week (Example: Brazil — this is where you will start each week)
• 12 week-by-week lesson plans (Example: Brazil) and lesson plans for 10 “experiences,” which is what AATW calls each week’s participatory cultural/musical adventure for your class (Example: Brazil, Capoeira))
• A teacher training video for each weekly “experience” (example: “Fandango/La Guacamaya”). [teachers can use these “experience” videos to learn how to lead their students in the experience themselves, or can watch the “experience” video with students in the classroom]
• A printout for each week’s hello and goodbye (AATW–Latin America salutation printouts example)
• Week-by-week PDF/printable handouts  for students to take home (example)
• A printable section of the AATW Musical Map that corresponds to the country you are “visiting” that week in class (Brazil section example–download the html page and click on each image to learn more)

For Latin America a satisfying weekly schedule would be:

— Introduction/Overview [Introduce region to students, start singing songs]

— Week 1: Chile [this week’s experience: The Cueca]

— Week 2: Argentina [Tango]

— Week 3: Uruguay [Gauchos]

— Week 4: Ecuador [Bomba]

— Week 5: Colombia [Cumbia]

— Week 6: Honduras (Garifuna) [Punta]

— Week 7: Mexico [Aztec dancing]

— Week 8: The Guianas [Wandelmars]

— Week 9: Venezuela [Yanomami Counting]

— Week 10: Brazil [Capoeira]

— Season-ending celebration

The Latin America curriculum kit is currently available and you can use it today. The Africa and South and Central Asia seasons are in development.

Classroom kit pricing