The 4th R, Creating a Human Rights Culture:
The Role of Service Learning, vol. 8 No. 1, Spring 1997.
Activity
Enjoying Diversity
Goals:
- To help children discriminate between prejudiced behaviors and accepting
behaviors
- To develop or enhance an appreciation for diversity among people
- To enhance their sense of pride in what makes them different from others
Age/grade level: Adaptable to any elementary school age group
Materials: Drawing paper, markers or crayons, and tape
Procedure:
- Participants are asked to close their eyes and think of their favorite
animal and two characteristics they like about it.
- The teacher and students then share their choices with the class.
- The teacher leads a discussion of how different and uniquely special
each choice is.
- The children are guided to transfer the discussion to differences in
people that can be appreciated. The teacher can highlight special gifts
of each student and encourage students to say what they think is special
about each other. At this point, the teacher explains words such as prejudice
and stereotype that do not value differences.
- Teacher(s) or two students do a role-play: they pretend to meet on
the playground and express their dislike of each other's hair, skin color,
etc. Have children talk about how it feels when someone doesn't like you
for no good reason. Then, the skit is replayed with the players meeting
and being nice to each other. The children talk about the good feelings
and friendships that come with acceptance.
- Review the words and concepts through questioning.
- The children then draw and color their favorite animal to be placed
on the wall.
- Review and question again with a lot of positive reinforcement.
This lesson was developed and designed and contributed by Amanda Bass,
Whitney Parrott, and Katie Huard, students at Mandeville High School in
Mandeville, Louisiana. They presented this lesson to a class of second
graders with great success.
