Fifth Grade: Accepting Differences

For our last lesson in this rotation, we discussed prejudice and how getting to know others keeps us from making prejudgments about others. I started the lesson by making an (hypothetical) announcement to the class: Students born in August, September, October, November and December will be able to continue going to recess; however students with birthdays later in the school year will need to start staying in during recess to work on math because they are younger. Because they are younger, these students probably aren't as good at math so they need extra time to work. After the announcement, I asked students for their responses. Many students felt upset and said that it wasn't fair.

I agreed with the students that what I had said wasn't fair, and told them that I had made that judgment without really knowing anything about their math skills or checking any of the grades for the students. Next, we talked about what it means to have prejudice, where people judge or form an opinion about a person before knowing him or her. We spent the remainder of the lesson talking about a video we watched about two students: Kaden and Miguel. The two students were not friends, but the two ended up waiting together for their parents to finish working (their parents worked at the same place). We talked about how the two boys were different: They look different, Miguel is from another country, they have different friends, Miguel is new to the school, Miguel is shy and Kaden isn't. These differences were very apparent in the video.

Then, we talked about ways the two boys were similar. We were able to determine several similarities between the boys: they're in the same class, their parents work in the same place, they both like sports. Once we had determined that the boys had some things in common, we talked about why they probably weren't friends: they have different groups of friends, they don't know they have things in common, they like different things. We talked about the importance of having differences and what would happen if we were all exactly the same (the world would be pretty boring!). We talked about how our differences make us more interesting, and how having differences allows us to learn from one another.

We watched the conclusion of the video clip, which showed the two boys finding out they had a lot in common. After the video, we decided that Kaden and Miguel could be friends. We talked about how learning about each other allowed the boys to become friends, and how important it is to get to know someone before making judgments about them. We ended our lesson with an activity where students took turns answering questions with a partner and learning what they had in common.

Third Grade: Understanding Perspectives

For our lesson on perspectives, students looked at an object from their perspective and we talked about how their perspective differed from their peers. After our perspective activity, we did a recap from the students in lesson 5 and how they were feeling. We also talked about the predictions that each student had made about what would happen between Kyle and Jenni after he spilled the milk on her. Many students predicted Kyle would help Jenni, continue laughing, or just walk away. After students took a moment to remember their predictions, I asked students to phrase their predictions in an If, Then format. For instance, If Kyle continues laughing, then Jenni may start crying.

Next, we watched the video to see what Kyle decided to do. Kyle ended up running away to grab paper towels and help Jenni. We talked about how Kyle's feelings changed once he saw the situation from Jenni's perspective. At first he had felt amused, but when he saw Jenni wasn't laughing he felt concerned, apologetic, and wanted to help. We also talked about how Jenni felt after Kyle decided to help her: many of us agreed she felt relieved about what had happened. We talked about why Jenni's feelings changed: because Kyle apologized, and she realized that it was an accident.

Another student in the video, Meg, had jumped to conclusions when Kyle ran away. She said, "Look! Kyle's running away. I can't believe he would do that!" We talked about how from Meg's perspective it appeared that Kyle had spilled milk on Jenni on purpose. We talked about how from Meg's perspective it first seemed like Kyle's spilling the milk was intentional, but once she got more information (she saw Kyle get the paper towels), she realized it was an accident and her feelings changed.

We ended the lesson by discussing how people can have different perspectives and feelings about the same situation. We also talked about how feelings can change, like Meg, Jenni, and Kyle showed us in the video. By noticing other peoples' feelings and thinking about others' perspectives we are more likely to have empathy for them, which helps us to be better friends.