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.
Project Preparation
The Inquiry Process
Interviewing Community Members
Persian New Year Event Announcement
Performing Different Tasks at Persian New Year Celebration Event
Culminating Product
Porject Scaffolding
Project Assessment
Implementation information not specified.
In order to introduce Persian New Year, Noruz, to the students of the Persian course, some videos clips from YouTube showing Persian New Year celebrations in Iran and other countries will be shown and they will be provided with some supplementary information.
YouTube video clips:
-Celebrating Noruz at the White House by the First Lady Michele Obama:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRucW-i45mw
-Press TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXjvlur8YO4
Other video clips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RV3EVQL97Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfrVxlg6X2E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYRTEjhnopI
-The culturally Authentic Texts
Students are introduced to different types of texts available online, which can provide multiple perspectives of the Persian New Year. The examples of them can be the following.
http://seattleglobalist.com/2014/03/20/how-to-celebrate-nowruz-the-persian-new-year-like-a-pro/21834
http://www.crystalinks.com/noruz.html
http://www.iranchamber.com/culture/articles/norooz_iranian_new_year.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowruz
- The "Driving Question"
How can the students of Persian Language at University of Hawaii at Manoa develop authentic Persian New Year (Noruz) project that can provide cultural opportunities for the larger Persian community in Honolulu?
Students have a “need to know” about the Noruz project in order to answer the driving question and other questions about Noruz celebration. Therefore, they ask their questions in class and discuss the answers with each other. Also, they try to find resources to have answers to their questions. This process may take some days because they need to have satisfactory answers.
After gathering general information about Noruz celebration, students decide on which aspect of Noruz they want to have their interviews and final product, that is, Noruz traditon and concept, food, Haftsin spread, or poetry reading. Therefore, they form their groups and discuss their questions in their own groups.
-Interview questions
Students will write thier interview questions for their own group and will discuss them with their team members to have the desired questions.
-Conducting interviews
Students will conduct their interviews in class so that they can practice their interviews. Next, they have their authentic interviews with the members of the Persian community in Honolulu to gather information.
Each member of the group will have four recorded interviews.
Students will prepare flyers and announcements and will post them on Persian Program Website, other related UH Manoa Websites, and Persian Community Facebook page. The flyers and announcements will be written in both Persian and English in order to attract the attention of both Persian-speaking and non-Persian speaking members.
On March 20, Persian New Year will be celebrated at UH Manoa. The audience will be the students and professors of UH Manoa as well as the members of the community.
Each student in each group will perform his/her task(s) at the ceremony in Persian language. In order to attract the attention of the non-speaking audience, the performance will be performed in English, too.
The culminating products continue by being presented through the event website. The details of the Persian New Year Celebration Event will be written in Persian language by the Persian language students and will be posted on the event website along with the pictures/videos being taken.
At different stages of the project, the instructor provides students with scaffolding and help them with providing feedback and comments to reinforce the project. Moreover, students provide peer comments to scaffold the project.
Throughout the project, there will be different stages of assesment:
-Student assessment
Students' work will be assessed at the different stages. Their works will be assessed based on the rubrics prepared for different tasks. For example, when each student conducts his/her own interviews, his/her interview will be assessed based on the rubric developed for interviews. When each student performs at the Noruz Event, his/her performance will be assessed based on the rubric developed for this task.
-Group assessment
After the collaboration of the group members, student groups will be assessed by both the instructor and members of the group based on the rubric develped for group working.
-Summative assessment
After having "student assessment" and "group assessment," there will be a summative assessment of the project based on the rubric developed for culminating products.
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