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This is something that already exists, that I made colorful to assess the cultural relevance of a piece of text. You may use this when selecting a piece of texts for your students, or have the students complete it after they read a piece of text.

*Higher level activity, have your students read a text with a character in it, and then read a second piece through the eyes of that character and then assess the cultural relevance of the text for the character they are reading for

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Nearpod: Foster a love of learning in every student

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Create active learning experiences students can’t wait to be a part of.

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create an
- Escape room
- Murder Mystery
- Scavenger Hunt
activity

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Breakouts are huge right now, but they are also a bit intimidating for teachers to create and implement. Just programing the locks for each kit has caused me anxiety. How would I find the time and patience to set all the locks? How would I reset everything in time for the next class? A digital breakout with Google Forms is the perfect solution. Read on for ideas and resources to create clues, and step-by-step instructions on how to set up a Google Form with locks and different pages.

I started to write this out as part of the blog post, but it was too difficult to explain in words. Instead I made a 10-minute video that walks you through each step from start to finish to create your locked Google Form.

Click the image below to check it out at YouTube.

Breakouts are really fun, but I also wanted to make sure mine was relevant to a subject beyond just team building. I created one for Macbeth (click here to check it out at my TpT store) and the first step was deciding what content to focus on. I finally settled on iambic pentameter, the Globe, Gunpowder Plot, theme, and Shakespearean insults. I had a few more ideas, but I couldn't figure out how to make the clues work.

In the end I only went with five topics since I expect students to spend about 10 minutes on each topic. I suggest having a few extra ideas from the start so you can easily drop the ones that are too difficult to turn into clues.

Click here for a one-stop-shop list of FREE websites and apps to creatively make clues for your Breakout. This is where I found the ticket and text message generator listed below. Lots of ideas and resources and they're all free!

Fake Concert Tickets

I used fake concert tickets to help teach about the Globe. I made theater tickets for a handful of Shakespeare's plays and included as much factual detail as I could: the name of Shakespeare's theater group (both groups!), correct dates for the plays, admission fee for the pit versus bench, and even location of the theater and Hampton Court Palace for their performance for King James I. As students analyze the tickets for clues, they can't help but learn all of these details about the Globe and the plays.

I turned them into clues by hiding directions in quotes from the plays. Students need the right set of directions to open the lock. You could also have clues hidden in event codes, the names of events, or additional comments on the tickets. Click here to make up your own.

Fake Text Messages

When I saw the text message generator, I knew I wanted to use that for Shakespearean insults. I sorted through to find a few dozen insults from various plays - ones I knew the students would enjoy. I looked for a common theme in some of the insults and created a clue from there. I also like the idea of having students manipulate the clues, so I cut out all the comments and have the students reorganize them in the correct order. The correct order will give them the answer to the clue. Here's an example of what it looks like when the students first begin the Breakout.

You can use this to have students order events or quotes for a text, identify different characters by the quote, or you can hide a message in a text message that students need to sort through. For mine, I included letters on each text that spell a word when correctly lined up. The word is the key for the digital lock. Click here to make up your own.

Podcasts

The website 5minutehistory.com is perfect to introduce students to a topic and have them pull information for a clue. As the title implies, it is not in-depth and can be heard in just five minutes. I used this for the Gunpowder Plot and had students get various names as the key to the digital lock. To give it the feel of a puzzle, I used the same letter for each name I wanted: the mark, the mole, the mastermind, and so on. It took some extra time, but I did not want this to feel like a worksheet in any way.

I also like this website because you can listen, read the transcript, or both. The more choice the students have the better.

Posters

Have you tried Canva.com yet? You need to if you haven't. It's free and you can easily create engaging posters to display around the room as clues. I used this with theme to create something similar to movie posters. I used three different stories that all have the same theme as Macbeth in order to introduce the theme.

You can hide clues in posters or create a handful of posters that all have some sort of similarity that is the clue.

Rebus Clues

Made easy using www.myrebus.com. Here is an example of what you can do with rebus clues.

Could you figure it out? It says "Look under the teacher's chair for a clue." And then I would have an envelope with a clue taped under my chair. Going this route you would want to do a different location for each group so they don't catch on to what is happening.

Number Clues

Want to incorporate some math into your clues? Try this website (click here) where I was able to quickly make the worksheet below. You could designate certain answers as the key for the lock.

Regardless of the subject you are teaching, this is a good option if you are short for clues. In groups of students, it's likely one or a few enjoy number problems like this one!

I've seen a few different ways to do this. I like to include a certificate for an ice cream from the cafeteria for each Breakout winner, but I also like to document their success for a more intrinsic motivator. I'm attaching here a few free Breakout celebration posters students can pose with for pictures. You can post the photos on a bulletin board, include them on a school web page or Instagram account, or just let students take selfies to document their awesomeness.

Creating activities like this one has actually helped me evade the elusive teacher burnout. Sure, it's more work for me than creating a worksheet or even a gallery walk. But I enjoyed unleashing my creativity, and my students had a blast while they were learning and collaborating! An awesome lesson never fails in helping me out of a slump.

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How to Create a Digital Breakout for the Classroom - Engaging and Effective Teaching

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Ideas and resources to create digital breakout clues and a link to a how-to video for step-by-step instructions on how to make locked pages in Google Forms.

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Culturally Relevant Literaturefor Classroom Use

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Culturally Relevant Literaturefor Classroom Use

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Sorted by grade level and varying cultures

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Worth the read, not very long.

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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How to use Google Forms/Quiz to... (cont...)

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How to use Google Forms/Quiz to... (cont...)

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create an
- Escape room
- Murder Mystery
- Scavenger Hunt
activity

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Click here for a replicable version of this site. Replace this text with a scenario that engages students in the task of breaking the locks. This is a great opportunity for teachers to use their creativity! Look at this breakout for an example.

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Sorted by Type, Award, and Culture

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This guide is intended to help students enrolled in the School of Education find resources related to curriculum development.

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Science Motivation in the Multicultural Classroom.pdf

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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You can sort by text type, grade level and subject.

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Our searchable library of short texts offers a diverse mix of stories and perspectives. This multigenre, multimedia collection aligns with the Common Core's recommendations for text complexity and the Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards. Choose from informational and literary nonfiction texts, literature, photographs, political cartoons, interviews, infographics and more.

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You must watch the video link for Christopher Emdin!!!

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I teach science. Can I be a multicultural educator - NAME Learn

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None of those statements are actually valid, but they are often presented as if they were absolutely truthful. In fact, too often, science is misrepresented as a neutral apolitical subject, suggesting that advancing multicultural education in science education is unnecessary, inapplicable, or impossible.

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millions use Screencastify to create amazing videos

/* Sets tab pane to display block instead of default display:none */ /* Allows CSS opacity transitions */ .w-tab-pane, .w--current { display: block; } /* Any .w-tab-pane that does not have webflow .w--curent sets opacity 0 */ .w-tab-pane:not(.w--curent) { opacity: 0; } /* Any element with .w-tab-pane that has .w--tab-active sets the opacity 100% */ .w-tab-pane.w--tab-active { opacity: 1; } /* Set the opacity transition to 1 second ease-in */ .w-tab-pane { transition: opacity 1s ease-in; }

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Educator, student, marketer, engineer, gamer. Whatever part you play, you'll have simple, yet powerful screen recording and editing tools.
Learn more

Easily share your creations in multiple channels. Let more viewers watch, pause and rewind on their schedule while maximizing time by eliminating unnecessary meetings.
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Collect video assignments to ensure any team or student is heard. Track viewing activity and add interactive questions and more to ensure your message is understood.
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Screencastify | Screen Recording and Video Editing

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Screencastify is the leading screen recorder for Chrome. Install the extension to record, edit, and share videos in seconds. Create video class assignments, training and tutorials, and make business communication faster.

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Allows you to share & gather book suggestions for struggling readers.

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Social Studies and Varying Perspectives

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Multicultural Education in Social Studies.pdf

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A wealth of links! Also, categorized by Content/Subject!! :)

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English news and easy articles for students of English

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News in Levels « World News for Students of English

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We write news in three different levels of English. We want to help you understand English more. Now all students can enjoy reading and listening to news.

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Useful links that can be used as a launch pad for ideas that can be implemented in your classroom and for informational sources that you can utilize when teaching

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LibGuides Home: Multicultural Education: Lesson Plans

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This guide is an introduction for your research. Consult it to learn where to find books, articles, journals, databases and other information resources.

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It's time to improve literacy skills during social studies instruction and ensure that readers of all abilities have what they need to access grade-level social studies concepts.

Join us on Thursday, December 7 for a look at scaffolded materials that provide extra literacy support while building key social studies concepts and skills.

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Newsela | Content and assessment platform

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Content Aligned To National & State Standard, Flexible To Support Relevant Curriculum. Find the Perfect Piece Of Content For Lessons. Go beyond the book.

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For grades k-6, but anything can be stretched, altered, and adjusted.

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Children's Literature with Social Studies Themes

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For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.

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CommonLit | Free Online Reading Passages and Literacy Resources

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CommonLit is a comprehensive literacy program with thousands of reading lessons, full-year ELA curriculum, benchmark assessments, and standards-based data for teachers.

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DECOLONIZING THE CLASSROOM: LESSONS IN MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

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DECOLONIZING THE CLASSROOM: LESSONS IN MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

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A really interesting read for teachers of all subjects and contents!! A great perspective and narrative from the eyes of a student, now teacher, on multicultural education.

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By Wayne Au

Illustrator: Jordin Isip

Illustration: Jordin Isip

When I was in 9th grade, I had Mr. Anderson for honors World History. Mr. Anderson was one of those teachers that all the honors and AP-track parents wanted their kids to have. He had a reputation for academic rigor, of preparing teenagers for their stratospheric climb towards being a National Merit Scholar slated to attend an Ivy League college.

Like many history teachers, Mr. Anderson talked about his trips to places we studied. During our unit on China, I remember him telling us stories about his trip there, including the exciting fruit he ate, something he called "lee-chee."

I knew what he was talking about. I loved lychee. Available only about six weeks a year and costing up to $8 a pound, lychees were a rare treat in my family. After my parents divorced, my father would take me to San Francisco's Chinatown during summer visits, where we bought bunches of the syrupy sweet fruit with translucent flesh. Sitting in the park, cracking the lychee's rough, deep red skin and feeling its juices drip down our chins and fingers, my father told me stories of his childhood in Hawaii, about how he would sneak into the lychee groves to get the precious fruit at the risk of getting shot by farmers guarding their crops.

But in my family, we said it differently. We called it "LIE-chee." Knowing that the translation between Chinese and English is difficult and imprecise, I raised my hand and tried to tell Mr. Anderson how my family pronounced it. He wasn't having it. This white teacher had been to China and knew better. So he told me (and the class) that I was simply wrong, that I didn't know what I was talking about. Never mind my memories of lychee, never mind my father's stories, and never mind that my Chinese grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins all pronounced it LIE-chee.

Now that I have been both a high school teacher and a teacher of teachers, when I reflect back on his class, I see that Mr. Anderson taught us some basic lessons about multicultural education, albeit by negative example. For instance, in Mr. Anderson's class, student knowledge about communities, cultures, and diversity didn't matter, especially if it contradicted his own. Further, Mr. Anderson's contempt for student knowledge revealed no sense of curiosity about the experiences and stories that might lead to a different perspective than his.

Another related lesson to take away from Mr. Anderson's negative example is that multicultural education should seek to draw on the knowledge, perspectives, and voices of the actual communities being studied. In Mr. Anderson's class, my own authentic cultural knowledge and perspective as a Chinese American had no value, and he actively disregarded my own lived experiences. Again, Mr. Anderson was contemptuous of student knowledge and he disregarded the importance of building from kids' lives and prior experiences.

Mr. Anderson's example also teaches us that, because it is connected to students' lives, multicultural education has to be based on dialogue - both amongst students and between students and teachers. As students in Mr. Anderson's class we were always on the outside looking in, and he and the textbooks were the sole authorities. There was no dialogue, only monologue.

The final lesson to draw from Mr. Anderson is that, when classes are not grounded in the lives of students, do not include the voices and knowledge of communities being studied, and are not based in dialogue, they create environments where not only are white students miseducated, but students of color feel as if their very identities are under attack.

Multicultural Education on the Down Low

I had to get my real multicultural education on the down low, outside of classes like Mr. Anderson's. I went to Garfield High School, located in Seattle's historically African American neighborhood, the Central District. Garfield has been known for many years as Seattle's "black high school," and back in the 1970s there was a strong Black Panther Party presence both in the neighborhood and in the school itself. Garfield, always a basketball powerhouse, also boasts a rich connection to African American culture and music, with names like Quincy Jones and Jimi Hendrix still haunting the hallways.

By the time I got there in the late 1980s, Garfield had become a flagship for the Seattle Public Schools. It housed the district's AP program, maintained a world-renowned jazz band, was the district's science magnet high school, and provided a model of Seattle's desegregation busing system (of which I was a part). Totaling around 1,600 students, Garfield's student body hovered at about 50 percent African American and 50 percent white, with a few Latinos and Asian Americans like myself sprinkled in.

Given Garfield's history, position in the community, and commitment to racially integrated education, you might think that real multicultural education took place in most classes. Sadly, it didn't. There was one teacher, Mr. Davis, who taught two "secret" classes at my school: one section of Harlem Renaissance and one section of African Studies.

To get into Mr. Davis' classes, you first had to learn (by word of mouth) the true content of his classes, which were listed plainly in the schedule as Language Arts 10b and Social Studies elective. Second you had to convince your counselor that yes, you really did want to be in Mr. Davis' class, that yes, you really knew what you were getting into.

For the first time in my schooling experience, I was one of only two non-African American students in a class. In Mr. Davis' classes we looked at the politics of Blackness through the poetry and literature of the Harlem Renaissance and hashed through segregation, desegregation, and African American identity in U.S. history. We read about how Greek civilization was built upon a legacy of knowledge that had already existed in Egypt. And then we learned that Egypt wasn't really "Egypt." From an African-centric standpoint it was actually called Kemet, with its own rich cultural worldview, symbolism, and creation stories.

I sat in this decidedly African-centric, predominantly African American cultural space, trying to sort through my own cultural identity as a mixed white and Chinese American young man, my own connection with African American culture, and my own sense of education and the politics of race. And I'm sure my presence also left many of my African American classmates questioning. I mean, what was this half-Asian kid doing in the black studies classes anyway? Why does he care? Isn't race and racism mainly about black and white? Do Chinese Americans, let alone half-bloods, even count as people of color? Struggling with these questions (and many more), all of us were asked to stretch.

To be sure, an African-centric course cannot be "multicultural" in and of itself. African-centered is just that, African-centered. But in the real-life context of a school like Garfield, Mr. Davis' classes embodied multicultural education: it was grounded in the lives, identities, and histories of students; it provided critical and alternative perspectives on history that we were not getting in our other classes; and it openly addressed the issue of racism.

Years later, having worked with very diverse populations of students, I see that Mr. Davis' classes also taught me about multicultural education. For instance, his class illustrated how multicultural education is fundamentally based in a critique of school knowledge that has historically been Eurocentric. For example, it was in his class that we learned that "civilization" did not start in Europe, that other nations and cultures had great civilizations that pre-dated their Western counterparts. Challenging such Eurocentrism also spoke to the cultural and political imperative to resist Eurocentric curriculum, as Mr. Davis saw his course as a positive and supportive intervention in the identity development and self-esteem for the students in his classes. Finally, inherent in Mr. Davis' instruction is the lesson that it is important to critically question what textbooks and teachers say about the world.

Mr. Davis' classes also offered a lesson on how multicultural education invites students to engage with real social issues. In his courses my classmates and I connected our burgeoning historical understandings of race and racism to contemporary issues. We argued about interracial dating, black nationalism, racism, and education. In this way, multicultural education inherently connects learning to the world outside of our classrooms.

Another lesson to be gained from Mr. Davis' example is that multicultural education creates a space for students to meaningfully engage with each other. It was through such struggle over social and political issues that I developed substantive relationships with my African American classmates - relationships that I do not think could have developed in my other, more Eurocentric classes that were either populated predominantly by white kids or simply did not create the space to really engage students of color.

Finally, it is crucial to acknowledge that Mr. Davis' classes helped me learn that multicultural education is rigorous. In African Studies and Harlem Renaissance we read serious texts like George G.M. James' Stolen Legacy to learn about ancient Egypt's effect on ancient Greek civilization, or Joel Augustus Rogers' From Superman to Man to gain historical perspectives of U.S. race relations.

Rigor and Multicultural Education

The connection between multicultural education and rigor is important because one of the consistent critiques of multicultural education is that it isn't "real" education, that it isn't rigorous. However, the idea that multicultural education represents a lowering of standards or a neglect of academic rigor is false.

Let's compare Mr. Davis' and Mr. Anderson's classes. As with most "rigorous," upper-track classes, the central pieces of rigor I remember from Mr. Anderson's "honors" World History class consisted of an immense amount of textbook reading, chapter questions, and a research paper. Such courses are rigorous in particular ways. Certainly they have formal and strict requirements, and Mr. Anderson's class, like most others of its kind, was demanding in terms of workload. We were always kept busy.

Now as a professor of education, when I critically reflect on these types of "honors" or "advanced" classes, I think that, although they require significant amounts of work, they are not necessarily intellectually rigorous. Instead they often ask for memorization and textbook reading comprehension, not critical analysis. Knowledge is multifaceted and simply reading tough books does not mean that students are engaged in understanding the complexities of any particular historical episode or time period.

Take teaching about the U.S. war with Mexico, for instance. A typical class would focus solely on the actions of governments - U.S. and Mexican alike. A multicultural perspective asks about the Irish-American soldiers, Mexican women in conquered territories, black and white abolitionists who opposed the war, soldiers who embraced and also rejected the war, Mexican cadets who jumped to their death rather than surrender to invading U.S. troops, etc. A multicultural perspective is not only inherently more interesting, it is also more complex - and more fully truthful, if we dare use that word. Further, academic rigor is impossible without the multiple perspectives that multicultural education provides because without it, we miss huge pieces of history, culture, and society - leaving gaps in our knowledge about the world.

Mr. Anderson's class miseducated us about the world, too. For instance, in addition to the textbook readings for our unit on Africa, Mr. Anderson had us watch the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy. In this movie an African San is befuddled by Western technology and makes a buffoon of himself. Through my 9th-grade eyes, I saw the colonizers' view of the African-native-as-primitive, of darker peoples as idiotic and childlike.

Mr. Anderson didn't really teach about this film. He just showed it as an "entertaining" way for 14-year-olds to learn about Africa. So we never learned about how such a film could justify the system of apartheid in South Africa by portraying the San people as incompetent and unable to be incorporated into a democratic society. We never learned how such a film might rationalize the idea that the San needed "benevolent" white rulers to take care of them.

My African Studies course with Mr. Davis, however, was different, and despite its tag as being "regular," its perspective made it more intellectually rigorous than my "honors" history classes because, as all good multicultural education should do, we were asked to consider the variety of our own experiences and relate them to the complexities of history and society.

I remember struggling to write a paper for Mr. Davis that explained the relationship between race, poverty, and education in the United States. While in many ways this topic was probably beyond my mid-teen reach, in many ways it wasn't: The relationship between race, poverty, and education was something I was trying to understand (and still am), and writing a paper about it pushed me in my writing and my thinking. Assignments like this made me think hard in my "regular" African Studies class, whereas my "honors" World History class asked for very little thinking at all - just lots of work. More importantly, this assignment illustrates how a multicultural curriculum honors the experiences and curiosity of students so that their own questions about these issues are encouraged and honored as a way of fueling their academic inquiry.

This rigorous need for multicultural perspectives raises another critical lesson: Multicultural education cannot be relegated to individual classes. Mr. Davis' classes were important because they existed within a context where most other classes were Eurocentric, so they became spaces of multicultural resistance. But ideally all classes at Garfield - social studies, language arts, math, science, art, etc. - should have taken multicultural education seriously if they really wanted to be rigorous and if they really wanted to engage all students in learning. For that matter, all classes for all students, from prekindergarten on, should take multicultural education seriously. Then, students would generally be in a position to more actively and collectively resist classroom colonization and would be smarter in that they could take up a more critical analysis of all course content.

The Struggle for Multicultural Education

Sadly, college-bound students at Garfield certainly didn't fight to get Mr. Davis' classes on their transcripts. Instead they would forego Harlem Renaissance and African Studies in order to stay in AP and on the honors track. Things haven't changed all that much since I was in high school, because in today's context of high-stakes education, multicultural education is still viewed as not academically rigorous, not "real" education, and not worthy of being included in the curriculum in its own right.

The lowly status of multicultural curriculum has also meant a constant fight to justify its existence. Take again for instance the African Studies class at Garfield. Ten years after I had walked the halls as a student, I returned to Garfield as a teacher. To my great pleasure, African Studies was given to me as part of my teaching load.

Not surprisingly, I found that many teachers in the social studies department openly sneered at the African Studies course, and the department chair - seeing that Mr. Davis had left to become a principal - thought it would be a good chance to get rid of the class. In his mind, it had no value. What the department chair couldn't see, and what I knew as a legacy student of that very same class, was that African Studies created an irreplaceable space to engage in the politics of Blackness that existed nowhere else at Garfield. Further, African Studies was an irreplaceable space where students' cultures were respected, where students learned to think in terms of multiple social experiences, where traditional narratives and explanations were complicated by race and culture. After a protracted and sometimes nasty fight, the African Studies course survived (and I enjoyed teaching it), but there shouldn't have been a fight to begin with. My experience fighting for African Studies taught me another lesson: Multicultural education is rooted in an anti-racist struggle over whose knowledge and experiences should be included in the curriculum.

The Need for Multicultural Education

I think the biggest lesson in multicultural education I've learned from my experiences as a student, teacher, and teacher educator, is that it is a valuable and necessary orientation towards teaching and learning that needs to be embraced by all educators. Every institution I've ever worked in has been resistant to multicultural education in some way, shape or form, and I'm tired of having to justify it, tired of having to prove its worth. As a person of color I take offense at the idea that my history, my perspective on the world as an individual and a representative member of a community does not matter.

As a teacher educator I encounter on a daily basis the consequences of schooling that is not multicultural. Many of my students know little of the histories and cultures of the students whom they will end up teaching. What's more, they don't know that they don't know, and I fear that many of them will enter communities of color as an army of Mr. Andersons, damaging the young people they're trusted to educate. Hopefully, the lessons in multicultural education they learn in my classes will help them become more like Mr. Davis, teachers who can lead a struggle against racism in their classrooms.

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Decolonizing the Classroom: Lessons in Multicultural Education

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By Wayne Au Illustrator: Jordin Isip When I was in 9th grade, I had Mr. Anderson for honors World History. Mr. Anderson was one of those teachers that all the honors and AP-track parents wanted their kids to have.

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Free grade leveled reading passages for use in the classroom or at home. Filter by genre, grade, topic, skill, and more. Click here!

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Rewordify.com | Understand what you read

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Rewordify.com helps you read more, understand better, learn new words, and teach more effectively.

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This is where the Randomizer Spinner can be found at, in addition to several other "cool" gadgets

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Russel Tarr, International School of Toulouse

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ClassTools.net: Create your own interactive learning resources

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Dozens of templates, quiz generators and learning tools for use in the classroom