Angelo J. Pompano
Title: The New Kids in School
Grade Level/Subject: 7-9; Language Arts and Diversity
Overview: This lesson involves role playing, writing in character, and presentation to the class. Students will visualize themselves as an outsider and write about their experience as being the student who is "different."
Purpose: The students will see how they observe and sometimes stereotype, or judge others by behavior and appearance.
Objective(s): This lesson will help students become more tolerant of others. It will also help them to become better writers.
Materials: Imagination, writing implements, and a video camera.
Activities and Procedures:
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1. Using the list of ethnic groups made in the first lesson, ask the students to pick an ethnic group other than their own from the list. Using the library and the Internet, have the students research the culture and customs of this group.
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2. Ask the students pretend that they are a boy or girl of this ethnic group and have them visualize what it might be like as a new student in your school. Explain to the class that this is a very unusual day in that today we have four new students, all of different backgrounds who have joined the class. Have the "new students" and the other students role play what it might be like for those students that first day in the classroom. After the students have been role playing for several minutes ring a bell simulating the end of the period. The students will then go on to the next "class" Pick another four "new students" to role play the first day in gym, at lunch, or on the bus. Depending upon how many students you have in the class, you may have to think of other school situations for the "new students" until everyone has had a chance to role play a new student. Encourage the actors to really get into their roles.
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3. After each student has had a turn to play a new student, instruct the students to return to their desks and write about the "first day of school" experience from the point of view of the character they were pretending to be.
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4. After sufficient time for writing, have the students to meet in small groups to read their writing to each other.
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5. Each group should then tape a "new student interview." The group should choose a person to be interviewed about how they felt being from a different culture and being new at school. The group should also select a person to conduct the interview, and a person to operate the video camera.
Summary: This activity helps students to see what it is like to be "different" and gives them a chance to experience life from a different perspective. It also gives them the experience necessary to take part in the next lesson which will be conducting real interviews.
This lesson conforms to the following performance standards for grades 5-8. The following standards were taken from the New Haven Public Schools Web Site.