Teaching culture to children
Hello everyone, I hope that you are all well.
I've been reading through the site, but I haven't been able to find anything that relates directly to the subject that I'm interested in. Basically, I'd like to find out more about the subject of teaching culture to children. There are many questions that I would love to have answered, including:
Is teaching about a foreign culture helpful to young learners? If the children are using only L1 wouldn't they be better off with a straight language class?
If you do teach culture, where in the curriculum should it be taught, and how much should there be of it?
What topics are good to talk about?
What kind of activities are there?
What are potential pitfalls of teaching about culture? etc etc
Basically my situation is that I'm asked to teach "culture" to young Japanese learners of English. The children don't have the language ability to do this in L2 (I can speak Japanese) There are no guidelines for what should be taught in the culture part of the curriculum, or indeed what the point of teaching it is. I'm getting slightly fed up of the "we have this in Japan, but not in England" compare and contrast lesson, and am sure there must be a better way!
Any help would be gratefully accepted. Thank you.