Only You Can Be You | A Diversity Lesson for Young Students

My school district has created a Diversity Alliance and our focus for the past few years has been to prepare students to live and work in a global, multicultural society by creating and supporting a teaching and learning environment where all employees and students understand and value commonalities and differences within and across various cultures in order to produce harmonious community lifelong learners.

To that end, in my position as Supervisor of Ed Tech for grades K-5, I've been working on a few lessons with a DEI focus. This one is very simple and can probably be done with students as early as first grade.

The lesson first includes a reading of "Only You Can Be You" by Sally Clarkson & Nathan Clarkson, although it would work with many children's books of a similar topic. I chose a quote by Catherine Pulsifer for this activity.

After reading the story, the children will visit this link to download my Keynote template. Slide one is my example. Students will go to slide 2, double-tap the word UNIQUE and then tap the paintbrush tool. Tap the text color and choose IMAGE and then CHANGE IMAGE. Choose TAKE PHOTO and then using the iPad camera, take a selfie up close. Their image will fill the word UNIQUE.

The students will follow similar steps for the word DIVERSITY however when they choose TAKE PHOTO they will incorporate a friend or two or the whole class into their pic.

That's it! Simple enough, and teachers can ask students to screenshot their work in order to collect it. The project will look similar to this photo:

 

Quote by Catherine Pulsifer:  We are all different, which is great because we are all UNIQUE.  Without DIVERSITY, life would

My Keynote file is below if anyone is interested! Thanks for reading!

Attachments

Tagged in: Diversity, Keynote

All Comments

Posted on January 13, 2023

Wonderful activity - love the idea and engaging approach to this important social emotional concept for learners.

Maximum file size: 400MB

Insert a video

Insert an image

Insert an image

125: 125
220: 220

This action can’t be undone.

Error Message

Are you sure you want to continue? Your changes will not be saved.

This post contains content from YouTube.

If you choose to view this content, YouTube may collect and process certain personal data. You can view YouTube’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/t/privacy" target="_blank">privacy policy here<span class="a11y">(opens in new window)</span>.</a>

This post contains content from YouTube.

You’ve rejected content from YouTube. Tap the button below to change your consent.