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This website has a plethora of free lesson plans and resources that will help students learn about social justice with rigor and social emotional concepts. This resource divides the lessons into four main concept areas; Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Action.

Lesson Plan Idea: The Truth About Voting

*May be more effective with high school students closer to voting age

Virtual classroom (Zoom meeting):

Have students read this handout about voting myths. Share a Padlet with all students that has a different category made for each voting myth. In five different breakout rooms according to each voting myth they will answer three questions with their group;

If everyone believed this myth, what would change?

If no one believed this myth, what would change?

Who benefits from this myth?

After students all fill out their section of the Padlet together in their groups, have them come back to the main room to share out their answers with the class and debrief with them.

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Vocabulary

Consensus [kun- sin-sus] (noun) an agreement of the majority of people involved.

Eligible Voter [ el-uh-juh-bull] [ vote-er] (noun) someone who meets all of the requirements (e.g., age, residency, etc.) to legally vote in an election.

Voter ID Laws [ vote-er eye-dee] (noun) a group of state laws, many passed within the last 10 years, that require voters to present identification when voting in person or when requesting an absentee ballot. Proponents of the laws claim that they prevent voter fraud, but opponents say that these laws suppress the vote.

Notes to the Teacher

We are publishing this lesson in the fall of 2020, as many educators are teaching remotely. Where necessary, the procedure for this lesson includes adaptations for classes meeting online.

Prepare the "Fighting Myths" activity by arranging five workstations around the room. Place a piece of poster paper and a different color marker at each workstation. At the top of the poster paper, transcribe one of the following myths (including the number).

# 1-The U.S. Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to vote.

# 2-Presidential elections are the ones that really matter.

# 3-Voter ID fraud is a big problem in the United States.

# 4-College students have to vote where their parents live.

# 5-My vote doesn't count.

For remote classes or students who are social distancing, educators might consider creating virtual workstations, using shared online files like Google documents. Each could be labeled with one of the myths, and students working in groups could add notes below.
Procedure

1. Start with a warm-up to get students thinking about the importance of participating in elections. Have students "vote" on any trivial debate-you might have them choose "Which is better: cats or dogs?" or have them choose between two movies or songs popular in your classroom. This activity will need to move quickly, so it's important to offer students a low-stakes choice. Either they can "vote with their feet" by moving around the classroom, or they can raise right hands for one answer, left hands for the other. Those teaching remotely might ask students to change their display name to reflect their choice.

2. No matter the results, tell students that you can't declare a winner yet. Ask them to count off to five, so each student has a number one through five. Let students know they'll need to remember their numbers for a while. Tell them: Only 80% of Americans are registered to vote, so we should only count 80% of these votes. Ask all of the students in group #1 to sit (or lower their arms, or change their display names back.) Repeat this process, letting students know: Even though 80% of Americans are registered, only 60% vote in Presidential elections. Ask all of the students in group #2 to sit (or lower their arms or change their display names).

3. Ask students how they feel about the fact that, at this point, just over half of the class is making a decision for everyone. Ask them to suggest a few reasons why so few Americans might vote. Remind students: Some people aren't allowed to vote. Voting is more difficult for some people than for others. And some people don't believe that their vote matters. Explain the goal of the day's lesson: We'll be learning about some common myths about voting today, thinking through who these myths might benefit, learning why they're wrong, and considering how we might ensure everyone has a chance to vote.

4. Move into the main activity by having students divide into five groups based on their numbers from the warm-up. Ask them to go to the workstation (or shared document) that matches the number for their group. They should read the myth and answer three questions:

If everyone believed this myth, what would change?

If no one believed this myth, what would change?

Who benefits from this myth?

5. Have each group choose a recorder who takes notes on the chart paper (or shared document) and labels the group's responses with their group number. After 3-5 minutes, have each group move on to the next myth. Groups can spend 3-5 minutes on each station or document, rotating until each group has had a chance to respond to each myth. At the end, ask groups to return to their original myth-the one that shares their group number-and read through their classmates' responses to decide whether they agree or disagree.

6. Distribute the "Five Myths" handout. Give each group 2 minutes to present their findings to the class. Students should do three things:

Read their myth aloud.

Take a hands-up poll: How many have heard this myth before today?

Share the truth about their myth from the "Five Myths" handout.

7. After each group has shared, ask students to share their thoughts about who benefits from each of these myths and why.

Alignment to CCSS

English Language Arts Standards | History/Social Studies | Grade 6-8
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.1
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.2
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.4

English Language Arts Standards | History/Social Studies | Grade 9-10
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.1
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.2
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.4
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.8

English Language Arts Standards | History/Social Studies | Grade 11-12
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.1
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.2
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.4
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.8

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In this lesson, students will learn some common myths about voting today, think through who these myths might benefit, learn why these myths are incorrect and consider how people might ensure every eligible citizen has a chance to vote. In an extension activity, students learn how to register to vote.

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This website has a bunch of different lessons and strategies for teaching students from culturally diverse backgrounds. It has strategies that take into account the language skills and cultures of students when developing learning objectives and activities in the classroom.

Lesson Plan Idea: Online Cultural Research Project

For this lesson, have students pick a food of their choice that represents a culture that they want to learn about. It could be their own, or a different one.

They will research different things about that food like when it was made, how it is traditionally prepared, where it has spread around the world, what are some different versions of it as it has diffused to different places etc.

After they gather all of the necessary information, have them prepare an 8-10 slide presentation using Google Slides to share with the class.

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Strategies for Teaching Culturally Diverse Students

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A descriptive list of behaviors and strategies for teaching culturally diverse students.

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This website has many different resources for teachers that provide ideas for activities about diversity at the start of the school year. It has lessons for Icebreakers, Preparation and Strategies, and Introspective activities that teachers can use with their students.

Lesson Plan Idea: Exchanging Stories - Names

Virtual lesson in Zoom*

For this lesson, ask students to type up a short paragraph with as much information they can about their name like who gave it to them, what is the origin, any nicknames, which name is preferred etc.

Encourage them to be creative and open the floor up to poetry, humor, adjectives etc. Also let them know they will share their story with the class.

After students have had enough time to write their short stories (20/25 minutes), assign them to breakout rooms of five or six students where they will share their story with their classmates in rotation for 10/15 minutes.

Get all students back to the main room and ask them how it felt for them to share their stories? Why was this activity important? What did you learn?

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EdChange - Equity, Anti-bias, & Diversity Activities & Exercises

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Multicultural, Anti-bias, & Diversity Activities & Exercises

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This page from Edutopia.org helps explain how students can become more culturally aware. He gives ideas and strategies that can be used in school that will build multicultural awareness with students.

Lesson Plan Idea: The Transformation Approach

For this lesson, have students pick a topic related to literature, art, sports, or music and trace its evolution by doing online research and preparing a slideshow to present to the class, a video documentary, or any creative format that they can think of to demonstrate their learning.

Students should be able to pick from a short list of topics created by the teacher, and use appropriate academic sources for their research. By giving students the freedom to choose their medium for presentation this will encourage even more engagement.

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Carlos Cortés, a professor of history at UC Riverside in California, maintains that it is the job of schools in a pluralistic democracy to help all students become what he calls "multicultural persons."

He outlines this as a person who can:

1. Understand the importance and operation of groups

2. Acquire an understanding of various cultures and worldviews

3. Recognize and understand others' perspectives before forming judgments about them

4. Realize the contributions of individual groups and diverse groups -- pluribus and num -- to our nation's history and future experiences

5. See how shared goals benefit from the contributions of diverse groups, each with its own history and future

6. Participate in the mass media as thoughtful, critical consumers and contributors

7. Develop a deep and lasting civic commitment and a concern for others as well as him- or herself

Accomplishing this is a challenge, one that is not adequately met by occasional programs, cultural assemblies, or guest speakers alone. Authors James Banks and Cherry McGee in their book, Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives, recommend two strategies that, when implemented school-wide over time, have the potency to create lasting multicultural awareness in students.

The Transformation Approach

Here, for any subject area, the emphasis is on how it emerged from a diverse mix of influences. United States history would reflect how our common history emerged out of an interaction of influences from various racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and national groups. A similar approach can be used in understanding the evolution of science, literature, music, art, and sports.

At the secondary level, students' being able to select genres of literature, art, music, or sport, or branches of science, and trace their evolution makes for an engaging project. Giving them the freedom to make their final report in the form of an interview, video documentary, or other creative format will inspire even more engagement.

The Decision-Making and Social Action Approach

Taking a transformative approach to a project places it in the context of students actively exploring the background, current status, key decisions, and necessary actions related to social issues. Some of these issues include: reducing prejudice and discrimination in their schools, and taking positions on community concerns, elections, advances in science and technology (such as biotechnology, space exploration, consumer electronics, or robotics), or civic issues at the community, state, national, or international levels. Again, this makes for a powerful group project.

At the individual level, but especially as group projects, either approach has strong connection with social and emotional learning and will provide teachers with numerous opportunities in context to help students develop SEL skills.

Additionally, problem-solving skills are at a premium, but also essential are perspective taking, organization and planning, and emotional recognition and management. When students present their projects, key competencies of giving and receiving feedback can be emphasized, as well as the persistence needed to make improvements based on feedback.

A Problem-Solving Worksheet for English Language Arts and Social Studies

Use the following format to help individual and groups of secondary students better understand the perspectives of different groups around historical or current events:

Groups: _______

Feelings: _______

Problems: _______

Goals: _______

Think of things to do: _______

Envision outcomes: _______

Select best alternative: _______

Plan it, anticipate: _______

Roadblocks: _______

On the above list, "groups" can refer to two groups attempting to deal with a situation, such as perspectives on civil rights issues in the past, voting rights at different points in time, or recent police shootings of African American males. It can also represent groups with different perspectives on social issues.

For the "feelings" and "problems" of different groups in a school, examples are: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights; students with disabilities; star performers; different cultural and ethnic groups in schools; and limited-English speakers.

There are many ways that the format can be used, and students will often have to engage in some research to determine the perspectives of different groups, how they have tried to solve their problems, the obstacles they have faced, and the responses.

Having a multicultural perspective requires SEL skills, and neither can be conveyed didactically. Both the perspective and skills become developed through guided, lived experience, even in schools that may appear to be lacking diversity -- at least on the surface.

When it comes to developing students' multicultural perspective, what are your thoughts and ideas? Please share in the comments section below.

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How SEL Can Help Students Gain a Multicultural Perspective

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Carlos Cortés, a professor of history at UC Riverside in California, maintains that it is the job of schools in a pluralistic democracy to help all students become what he calls "multicultural persons."

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ScreenPal - Cultural Awareness Activities

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ScreenPal - Cultural Awareness Activities

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This website has 10 different activities that teachers can use to promote cultural awareness in their classrooms. These activities help develop culturally aware skills for elementary through high school aged students.

Lesson Plan Idea: Multicultural Decorations

For this lesson, have students pick a country form a list that the teacher creates, and create a story to explain the significant symbols of that country.

Let students do a traditional story, poem, rap or music video, etc. to demonstrate their learning.

When students are done have them share them either in small groups or with the whole class.

Bonus* Share photos of the completed projects to an online group/class Facobook or Instagram page with permission for others to see their work.

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Guest Post: Classrooms around the country are generally becoming more diverse. From kindergarten through college, the percentage of diversity has grown considerably over the past 10+ years.

While we'd like to think that classroom diversity will naturally translate into culturally aware students, the truth is that students often need learning opportunities designed to develop these traits. Not only will this help them in the classroom, but it will also guide them to develop skills and a worldview in the adult world.

Cultural awareness in the classroom also translates to greater civic participation and creativity later in life.

No matter what you teach, it's important to incorporate activities that promote cultural awareness into your classroom. Here are 10 ideas for things you can do with your students to help make them more culturally aware.

1. Language Learning

Incorporate languages in your class. Even if you're not a language teacher, you can add language lessons into your classroom relevant to the subject you teach-even math!

For example, you could teach students how to count in different languages. Or you can just teach different subject-related vocabulary in different languages. Both of these are great activities for younger children, though teens may also enjoy them.

Create a slide presentation highlighting vocabulary in different languages. Import this presentation into ScreenPal's Story feature. Each slide will become a section of your Story and you can add webcam recordings, narration, and music to engage your class.

2. Potluck

Food has always been a great way to introduce people to new cultures, so why not bring it into the classroom?

Have students bring in a food dish from their culture to share. They can say a few words about the dish they bring in. They could discuss the dish's cultural relevance, but they could also talk about its relevance in their family. For example, maybe a recipe was passed down from a family elder, who brought it with them when they immigrated.

Ultimately, sharing cultural foods can help bring students together and foster a greater understanding of and connection to other people's cultures.

If you are teaching remotely, but still want to use a potluck to introduce students to other cultures, ask students to record them cooking their favorite dish and describe the significance of this cultural tradition. Compile these recordings into a Channel using your ScreenPal hosting account. This Channel can be password protected or unlisted to protect students' privacy. Share the link with your class so they can enjoy a potluck from afar!

3. Multicultural Media

Today's students are largely multimedia learners, and media content related to diversity and culture are always good learning tools. Not only is it important to incorporate videos that talk about diversity, but also videos with culturally diverse people showcasing people of different backgrounds doing everyday activities helps to normalize diversity.

Instructional videos are a good place to start. These might cover topics, such as how to make something from a culture (how to draw Japanese calligraphy, for example). Videos created by members of different communities can also be helpful to highlight differences and similarities between cultures.

But multimedia doesn't have to be just video. It can incorporate music or books from different cultures as well. For example, younger children might enjoy learning traditional children's songs or possibly traditional dances from other cultures. Or if you do story time in your classroom, read books by authors from a wide range of cultures.

4. Presentations

Student-led learning is an excellent way to ignite passion and excitement around a topic, and learning about culture is no exception. Letting students explore a particular topic of interest and presenting their topic to the class can help them become more knowledgeable while inspiring a love for learning.

There are a number of routes you can take when it comes to student-led diversity and cultural awareness lessons. One idea is to have students who are multilingual prepare a brief presentation or lesson on their language and culture to share with their classmates.

Students can also create presentations and learn about other cultures that are different from their own. You might even encourage them to do an "Around the World in 80 Days" type of assignment, where students use a green screen to talk about the different places they would visit on such a trip. Or maybe they simply incorporate a video of their favorite musical act from other countries.

5. "Who Am I?" Creative Projects

Everyone at some point in their life asks themselves, "Who am I?" It's human nature to question our existence and how we came to be here, and that is often tied directly into our own identities.

"Who Am I?" projects are excellent opportunities for students to probe their own cultural identity and background, while also giving them a platform to share that with their peers. These projects could be genealogical in nature, but they can also be another opportunity for students to research and discuss their own cultural backgrounds. While these topics and exercises are often more suited to teens, younger children may also enjoy sharing and learning about each other's culture.

6. Multicultural Decorations

Art projects are always an excellent way to give students hands-on experience in working with complex subject matters like diversity. The best part is that both young children and teens typically love hands-on art projects. Some ideas include:

7. Small-Group Conversations

We've discussed how to incorporate cultural awareness learning as an entire classroom, but small-group conversations can also be a positive and fruitful learning experience.

Small group discussions tend to be low-stress compared to big presentations, but they're also a great way for students to engage each other in an informal way. Of course, it's a good idea to provide some sort of structure to these discussions in order to keep the students focused. Edutopia has some great discussion strategies to deepen student engagement- many in small-group settings- on this blog post.

8. Sensitivity vs. Awareness

While learning and sharing information about different cultures is important, it's also important for students to learn how to be aware of and sensitive to culture differences. What's more, we often talk about these two concepts interchangeably, even though they are slightly different.

Cultural awareness generally refers to being open to other cultures. Sensitivity is more nuanced, referring to knowledge of a culture's difference but not viewing those differences in terms of their value. They're often viewed on a spectrum (pictured below), where awareness leads to sensitivity, competency, and safety.

In terms of the classroom, it's important for students to understand how to interact with people from other cultures. This can be a formal lesson, such as how different cultures greet each other respectfully. Another good approach is to lay out some ground rules that both you and your students follow, such as listening respectfully, not attacking or insulting anyone's cultural identity, and to prohibit any uses of cultural slurs or other derogatory phrases.Try including these ground rules in your class contract that you create at the beginning of the school year or semester.

9. Volunteer Projects

Volunteer projects are excellent ways to get your students involved in a vibrant civic culture, but they're also great opportunities to learn about people from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Here are a few ideas for volunteer projects that can reinforce cultural lessons from the classroom.

Volunteer at a soup kitchen

Organize a diversity celebration at school

Organize a school-wide poster campaign supporting diversity

Sponsor a classroom located in other cities or countries

Mentor younger students in underprivileged neighborhoods

Organize a diversity parade (at school or elsewhere)

With volunteer opportunities, students will have a chance to give back to the community and feel like they are making a positive impact in the world. ScreenPal is the perfect tool for documenting these volunteer projects. Students can utilize the ScreenPal's Story feature to combine video, image, and sound artifacts into one video project that they can then share with their classmates and their community.

10. Supporting Inclusivity in Your Curriculum

If you want to develop students with good cultural awareness, then it has to start with the teacher and the curriculum. Teachers should lead by example by making their curriculum as inclusive as possible. Take some time to review your all your materials with a critical eye towards ensuring that minorities and different cultures are consistently well-represented in all your videos and visuals. You might also want to incorporate materials from other cultures into lessons that aren't necessarily focused on that culture itself.

It's also essential for teachers to be aware of their own cultural biases and to ensure they don't let those influence how and what students learn. To that end, teachers need to make sure they're cautious about things like body language, touch, and humor.

Want more ideas for incorporating diversity lessons into the classroom? Check out our blog for more resources and approaches!

About our guest writer: Daniel Waldman is a former agency owner turned expat freelance writer and event manager with nearly 20 years of experience working with a wide variety of brands, organizations, and individuals. He got his start as an editor at a vanity press, and later went on to lead marketing and communications at a variety of agencies before starting his own business. He lives in France with his wife, two daughters and four cats.

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10 classroom activities to promote cultural awareness

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Here are 10 ideas for cultural awareness activities you can do with your students in the classroom to help them become more culturally aware.