Thursday, August 8, 2013

Diversity

Don't Be a Sneetch!

This lesson is interactive and will definitely capture your students' attention. The main purpose of this lesson is to teach students about diversity and how appearances don't make the person.
 
Group Activity: Before I start this activity with the class, I check with the teacher to see which student might be "a good sport" or would not get their feelings hurt for being left out. Once I have selected that student, the activity starts. Every child closes their eyes and puts their head on their desk with their fist sticking out. I walk around the classroom placing different colored stars on the back of each child's hand. (Some received red stars, some blue, some gold, some green and only ONE person received the silver star.)  The picture below shows an example of where I placed the sticker on each child's hand.
***Once I was finished handing out stars, I instructed the kids to lift their heads and then get out of their desks to look around the room and find their matches. Once they found their matches, they were supposed to form a group. The student that received a silver didn't have a match and didn't have a group. He/she was left out. I asked the student how that made him/her feel and some of the responses I received were, "Sad", "Lonely", "Bad", "Upset", etc. I was very proud to hear some of the kids from the other groups say, "You can be part of our group!" (I almost had to run and find my Kleenex... So sweet!) This opened up the floor for all kinds of discussion and it also allowed me the opportunity to introduce the video we were going to watch for this particular lesson... The Sneetches
This video is rather long (especially since I'm only with my kids for 30 minutes), but it's definitely worth it. The students love this story and it teaches a valuable lesson about including others no matter what their difference may be.
 Closure: I usually ask two girls from the class to help me with the last activity since they seem to be a little more open with their feelings and don't mind describing what they like about each other. I often have the more outgoing girl tell me what she likes about the other female student and then I get both of them to describe to me how they are the same.

Once they are done describing similarities, I ask the class as a whole what is the purpose of wearing reading glasses. (The response is usually, "to help you see better".) Then, I take out a pair of glasses that have colored lenses. (The ones above can be purchased at Party City.) I have one of the girls put on the glasses and then I tell her to look at her friend that she just finished describing. I ask her if her friend still has all of those wonderful qualities... of course, the answer is always, "Yes". I remind the student that the glasses she is wearing is suppose to help her see better and her friend should be pink now. Then I pose the question, "Since she is now pink, is she still your friend and does being a different color make her different on the inside?" At that point we close the lesson discussing outward appearances not being important and that it is what's on the inside that counts!

4 comments:

  1. Love this! What grade do you think connects with it the best?

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    1. Hey Sara! Thanks so much for the reply and positive feedback! :) I used this lesson with my 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders, and I will say that my 2nd and 3rd graders seemed to connect with this lesson better than my younger students. The older grades seemed to express themselves better during the closing activity and had more feedback about times they felt excluded from a group.

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  2. Awesome! I haven't decided if I want to do it at second or third grade, but I will definitely use it this year. I am new to your blog and really like your ideas. Thanks for sharing :)

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    1. Thanks so much… I love sharing and receiving ideas! Please let me know how your lesson turns out when you teach it this year! I hope your kids enjoy it as much as mine did. The only negative thing that I would say about this lesson is that in the movie they use the word “stupid” twice… Of course, my 1st graders reacted with a, “Oooooh!” :-/ So, from that point on, I decided to let the kids know ahead of time that I realized the word was on the video and it made me sad that they included it in the movie, but that I needed them to look past it and concentrate on the message.(I just wanted to give you a heads up before you watched it with your students.) Thank you for visiting my blog! :)

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