Lesson Overview

Topic: Teaching Awareness of the Harmfulness of Stereotyping

This lesson helps students develop their awareness of the harmfulness of stereotyping and develop their listening, speaking and writing skills . Students will also have the opportunity to watch and discuss different stereotypes  so that they can be challenged to change their perceptions and beliefs about themselves and their peers. The class is designed to promote tolerance and acceptance and a non judgmental attitude towards students helping them become more socially aware as 21st Century citizens.

Description

Students will be introduced to different  stereotypes to help them effectively understand and be aware that the assumptions they might have can lead them to bias and unfair judgments about individuals and groups. This lesson is intended to be as a student-led lesson as possible and students will be mainly involved in small group activities. Regarding the different classroom contexts, the total time to complete this EFL lesson is 60-90 minutes; however, longer class periods can be filled with extended independent practice activities.  Assessment may require an additional class period.

Student Characteristics

Student Group

High-school students and adults

Skill and Language Level

 This lesson plan is designed for intermediate students, but it can be adapted for other levels. 

Curriculum Alignment with Learning Outcome(s)

Supported Outcomes

This lesson plan aims to make students 

1. develop their knowledge of stereotypes  

2. recognize their own implicit stereotypes and biases 

Student Learning Objectives

 The students will be able to:

•  define what “stereotype” is 
• identify and give examples of different stereotypes 
• compare and contrast stereotypes
• give reasons on the harmfulness of stereotypes

Materials

Teaching Materials

• stereotypes pictures. There is a suggestions below, but any other pictures which the teacher thinks suits the lesson can be used. 
• Picture - Why Stereotypes are harmful - (available at https://momentousinstitute.org/blog/why-stereotypes-are-harmful)
•  videos from YouTube.  Regarding the diverse educational contexts, some of the activities may not fit the classroom infrastructure. If there is no internet connection, there are other ways to show the video to the students. 

• laptop and  flash drive
• bluetooth speaker
• white board
• markers
• pens or pencils
•  flip charts 

Student Materials

handouts for students

Lesson Plan

Prior Knowledge Check

3-5 minutes:

1. The teacher asks the students if they know what Stereotype is writing the word on the white board and elicit student-provided definitions. 
2. Then students in pairs choose a nationality and finish the sentences "American people are...";"Brazilian people are..." ; "Albanian people are..."

Warm up activity

10-15 minutes

Teacher:

1. asks  students to share the sentences they have written about different nationality stereotypes with the class and say why they think so. 
2. draws a circle on the board with the word "Stereotype" in it and asks  students "What kinds of stereotypes do you know?" (this can be as a Think-Pair-Share activity)

Guided Practice for the teacher and student practice

25 - 35 minutes

1. Collaboratively group work. The teacher  divides  the students into  groups of four  and asks them to brainstorm and discuss on the reasons of creating certain stereotypes. For example:  “People think I am a samba dancer because I was born in Brazil” or “People think I am good at math because I am Indian”. "People think I love pink color because I'm a girl." After the group discussion, a representative from each group shares their findings. (Circle of voices technique - Each student  is given one minute to speak within a group and no one interrupts) (8-10 minutes)
2. Teacher provides students with a picture and a video that show the harmfulness or risks of being too much influenced by stereotyping. 
3. After watching the video teacher gives students time to reflect and provides them with some vocabulary to prepare them for discussion.
4.  Discussion- Students discuss on the harmfulness of implicit stereotypes.They provide examples from their own experience. The teacher provides them with academic conversation skills material.
5.  Poster preparation- Students in groups prepare posters and draw images showing the harmfulness  of stereotyping. (Poster presentation will take place in the coming class)

Feedback

1. Teacher brings the class back together for focus discussion.

2. The teacher elicits corrections from the entire class regarding the errors (I heard some people say ________. What is wrong with this? How can we correct this?")

3. Depending on the responses, the teacher guides students to recognizing the correct answer before directly providing it to them.

Closing Activity

1. The teacher asks students to think about the difference between their conception about stereotyping at the very beginning of the lesson and at the end of the lesson.

2. Teacher provides two different types of homework and students can choose

•  "Just because" worksheet 
• Students write a paragraph/or a summary of their discussions in groups.

Extension and/or Differentiation

Students who have little to no difficulty with the activity can be individually encouraged to listen and record the ideas that they hear from their group members. Then, the whole group could organize the information into an outline or summary and identify places where the target language or skills could be used. Students who are having  trouble participating in their assigned group can be reassigned to a different group or the expectations for the independent practice can be adjusted. 

Assessment

Assessment Methods

Students will hand in their writing assignment.

Grading Criteria and/or Rubrics

The teacher provides students with the rubric before the assessment.

The teacher provides students with the rubric before the assessment.