Celebrating Persian New Year (Noruz) at University of Hawaii at Manoa
by Ladan Hamedani
created on Dec 11, 2015 modified on Jun 24, 2016 08:26
The project idea is to present Persian New Year, Noruz, at University of Hawaii at Manoa. The product will be presenting an event introducing the Persian New Year tradition and concept, food, and different items set on a spread called “Haftsin” as well as poetry reading. The public audience will be both members of Persian Community and members of non-Persian community in Honolulu.
Because the audience consists of both Persian and non-Persian speakers, the culminating product will be performed in both Persian and English. The audience who does not know about Persian language culture will become familiar with Persian New Year (Noruz) concepts, such as the traditional background of it and the way it is celebrated. Moreover, it has a lot of appealing aspects to attract them, such as being on the first day of the spring and being the celebration of the rebirth of the nature. Noruz is the first day of the Iranian calendar and the most important Persian celebration of the year. It is celebrated on March equinox, the precise astronomical start of spring.
It will also be appealing to Persian speakers in Honolulu because it will be celebrated exactly on the same day that Persian New Year is celebrated in Iran and all over the world, such in Iraq, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, India, and Pakistan.
Moreover, it will meet the needs of the Persian Language Program at UH Manoa by presenting an important aspect of the Persian culture through conducting the project and involving Persian language students in this project in order to draw the attention of the community members to this event as a major part of Persian language and culture.
Finally, the Noruz project is focused on teaching knowledge and skills to the students of Persian language courses. Through the Noruz project, the cultural awareness, socio-linguistic competence, and linguistic competence, and in particular, communicative competence of the Persian language learners will be improved. They will enhance their language skills in different stages of the project, such as researching, writing the interview questions, conducting interviews, and presenting different aspects of Noruz to the audience.
1. Project Preparation - Project preparation consists of showing some video clips about Persian New Year, Noruz, celebrations in Iran and some other countries and providing students with some general information about Noruz. more detail
1. Noruz Tradition and Concept - This task is to provide multiple perspectives of the Persian New Year tradition and concept. more detail
2. Driving Question - Students discuss different aspects of Noruz to make a driving question with each other. more detail
1. The Inquiry Process - Students gather information and decide on which aspect of Noruz they want to have their final product. more detail
2. Interviewing Community Members - Students prepare themselves for interviewing the community members. more detail
3. Persian New Year Event Announcement - Students announce the Noruz Event through different means. more detail
4. Performing Different Tasks at Persian New Year Celebration Event - On the day of the Persian New Year Celebration event, students performing different tasks. more detail
5. Culminating Product - The culminating product will be presented on the event website. more detail
6. Porject Scaffolding - Scaffolding the project at different stages can be done by the instructor and the peer work of the students. more detail
1. Project Assessment - Students and the whole project will be assessed at different stages. more detail
