(Goal: set norms and build relationship between participants. Start to challenge stereotypes.)
Remember: plan to end any #USvsHate lesson by inviting students to create anti-hate messaging in any media. (See Getting Started for overall #USvsHate instructions and contest dates.)
In this section of lessons, we’re interested in conversations about real lives that build relationship and start to challenge assumptions. Then, we have a lifetime of learning to pursue!
BEFORE YOU TEACH: With your students, make some agreements for respectful dialogue if your classroom/group doesn’t already have them! Here are several examples.
Contracts (Facing History)
- Grade Level: all grades
- Highlight: Supports students to create class norms, by editing existing norm lists. Scroll to bottom to watch video from a real classroom of students engaging in this strategy!
Teaching about Controversial or Difficult Issues (Morningside Center)
- Grade Level: all grades, educator professional development
- Highlight: “To create a safe and supportive environment, make group agreements. . . These might include guidelines like ‘no name-calling,’ ‘no interrupting,’ ‘listen without judgment,’ ’share to your level of comfort,’ ‘you have the right to pass,’ and the like. Remind students that when they talk about groups of people, they should be careful to use the word ‘some,’ not ‘all.’. . .Most importantly, model how to talk about sensitive and controversial topics by being honest and open yourself, respecting different points of view and accepting of students’ feelings.”
Guidelines for Respectful GSA Discussion (GLSEN)
- Grade Level: all grades, educator professional development
- Highlight: A short list of student-friendly community agreements!
Can We Talk? Tips for Respectful Conversations in Schools, Workplaces and Communities (ADL)
- Grade Level: all grades, educator professional development
- Highlight: Tips and strategies to set up respectful and thoughtful conversations.
Check out The Thinking Behind #USvsHate to consider what we’re trying to accomplish together! Explore any terms or concepts you might want in hand. Check out our short list of #USvsHate Dialogue strategies, too!
Getting to Know Each Other
20 Face-to-Face Advisories (Teaching Tolerance)
- Grade Level: all grades
- Highlight: Lots of highly recommended community-building activities in here! Pick one or more to build community!
Activities Before Mix It Up (Teaching Tolerance)
- Grade Level: all grades
- Highlight: A list of activities designed to prepare kids for deeper conversations about identity and inclusion. (Teaching Tolerance encourages schools to use them in advance of Mix It Up at Lunch Day.)
Exploring and Sharing Identities: Busting Stereotypes and Caring for Each Other
“Ready, Set, Respect”! (GLSEN)
- Grade Level: elementary
- Time Required: 30-45 Minutes each lesson
- Materials Needed: handouts provided
- Highlight: Explore these many community-building and anti-hate lessons for elementary students!
The Ins and Outs of Groups (p. 17 of “Ready, Set, Respect”) (GLSEN)
- Grade Level: 3-5
- Time Required: 30-45 Minutes
- Materials Needed: Provided handout
- Highlight: Lesson that specifically addresses building an understanding of being a part of a majority or minority group. Includes activity with movement based on non-divisive examples for students to see what it can feel like to be included or not included in a group.
Identity and Labels (Facing History and Ourselves)
- Grade Level: 9 and up
- Time Required: 2-3 Periods
- Materials Needed: Image, Video, and Reading Provided
- Highlight: Helps student ask: How do the labels and assumptions others make about us influence our identities?
Identity & Community: An Introduction to 6th Grade Social Studies (Facing History and Ourselves)
- Grade Level: 6-8
- Time Required: 10 lessons that are 1-3 hours each, can be adapted to fit anywhere from a two-week to six-week unit
- Materials Needed: See each lesson description.
- Highlight: A great way to start the year! Lessons provide a way for students to engage with their own identity and their place within different communities. The last, lesson 10, describes creating a community in the classroom and norms.
It’s Okay to Feel Different (Teaching Tolerance)
- Grade Level: K-5
- Time Required: N/A
- Materials Needed: Book: It’s Okay to Be Different, Posterboard, Construction Paper, Crayons or Paint
- Highlight: Create a jigsaw puzzle with pieces representing each student to showcase the diversity in your classroom. This lesson helps students develop an understanding of the importance of diversity in a community.
Appreciating Differences and Acknowledging Stereotypes (HRC/Welcoming Schools)
- Grade Level: 3-6
- Time Required: 50 minute lesson
- Materials Needed: Real lemons and apples (or other fruits) – 1 per student
- Highlight: An overall introduction to stereotypical thinking. A very tangible lesson for younger students to grasp the concept of stereotyping.
That’s a (Gender) Stereotype (GLSEN)
- Grade Level: 1-3
- Time Required: 40 Minutes
- Materials Needed: Chart Paper, General Class Supplies
- Highlight: Group activity around stereotypes relevant to the age of the students, with suggestions for follow up activities to reinforce the message.
I Am Poems [HRC/Welcoming Schools]
- Grade Level: K-8
- Time Required: 1½ hours
- Materials Needed: Copies of provided poem
- Highlight: Creative way for students to learn about each other and potential for class collage embracing student diversity.
The Shape of Home (Teaching Tolerance)
- Grade Level: 3-10
- Time Required: 1-3 hours
- Materials Needed: Copies of handout and story, Lined paper (or a notebook) for each student, chart paper or a whiteboard, map of the United States
- Highlight: A lesson on the meaning of “home” for different people and communities.
My Family Rocks! (Teaching Tolerance)
- Grade Level: K-5
- Time Required: 2-4 hours of class time
- Materials Needed: Flipchart, sticky notes, several magazines and newspapers, scissors, art materials
- Highlight: Students explore the definition of family, learn about different kinds of family structures and explore what makes their own family unique.
What is Community? (Teaching Tolerance)
- Grade Level: K-2
- Time Required: 1-3 class days
- Materials Needed: “The Gift” book, crayons or colored pencils, and paper
- Highlight: Students will identify people and places that make their own neighborhoods special.
Understanding My Family’s History (Teaching Tolerance)
- Grade Level: K-5
- Time Required: One week
- Materials Needed: objects gathered from home, including a photo of each student, world map, colored push pins, colored markers, color-coded map key with enough colors for each student (colors correspond to pin colors), literature addressing immigration, slavery and Native Americans, copies of the Family Data Sheet. For the second part of the lesson: markers, copies of the “nine-patch sheet” to create a personal ‘paper quilt’, supply of gathered objects from home (see “A Homework Assignment” section), glue sticks, scissors, 9” x 9” construction paper squares for backing the paper quilt sheets.
- Highlight: Art project; hands-on. After exposure to relevant literature in class, students will research their family history by interviewing their parents and then tell their story to classmates.
Our Family (Not in Our Town/Not in Our School)
- Grade Level: K-8
- Time Required: 10-20 minutes
- Materials Needed: Video ( 7 min) and questions or worksheet
- Highlight: “This short film is a collaboration between Our Family Coalition and Not In Our Town to encourage conversation about the many diverse family constellations, to give children the opportunity to see and appreciate their own families, and to be open and respectful to those who are different from them.” Shows American classroom discussion about family diversity.
Empathy Lessons (Teaching Tolerance)
Grade Level:
- K-2: What Is Empathy?
- Time Required: 2-3 hours
- Materials Needed: Everything provided to print and make copies for class
- Highlight: Helps to explicitly teach students to be more conscious of others’ feelings, with four different story scenarios to read and discuss
- 3-5: Understanding Empathy
- Time Required: 2-3 hours
- Materials Needed: Everything provided to print and make copies for class
- Highlight: Helps to explicitly teach students to be more conscious of others’ feelings, with four different story scenarios to read and discuss.
- 6-8: Developing Empathy
- Time Required: 1-2 class periods
- Materials Needed: Everything provided to print and make copies for class
- Highlight: Helps to explicitly teach students to be more conscious of others’ feelings, with four different story scenarios to read and discuss.
- 9-12 and up: Showing Empathy
- Time Required: 1-2 class periods
- Materials Needed: Everything provided to print and make copies for class
- Highlight: Helps to explicitly teach students to be more conscious of others’ feelings, with four different story scenarios to read and discuss.
AFTER YOU TEACH: End your Community Building #USvsHate lesson by inviting students to create anti-hate messaging in any media. (See Getting Started and this Guide for instructions.)
(To support your students in creating anti-hate messaging after any #USvsHate lesson, consider ending with one of these activities!)
“Do Something”!: (Teaching Tolerance)
- Grade Level: all grades
- Highlight: Most of these performance tasks ask students to make public anti-hate messages to take action against hate and bias. You can filter by grade level.
Keep learning! ***As you teach any #USvsHate lesson, issues of race, immigration, gender, income, sexuality, and religion might come up, requiring more information on our society, communities, history, and life experiences. Next-step learning can happen through dialogues; readings; films; field trips to community settings; visits from community organizations; local history exploration; home visits; and learning with all the contributing organizations. Teaching Tolerance’s Perspectives Texts series and aligned Social Justice Standards are a huge resource for curriculum development.
Check out our Tools for Productive Group Dialogues for next ideas for supporting students in conversation, and our additional resources for Schoolwide Responses to Hate and Bias. Click on Comments to discuss any lesson you tried with other teachers, and Join Our Community for more support!
Now check out Foundational Anti-Hate Lessons and More Specific Anti-Hate Lessons to go deeper!
Overall questions or ideas for this #USvsHate Resource List? Contact Mica Pollock at micapollock@ucsd.edu.