Mix It Up
This activity is designed for use with our free curriculum kit, Mighty Times: The Children's March, designed for the middle and upper grades.
Stay in the Mix for Valentine's Day
Celebrate Valentine's legacy of love and resistance!
Place as a Mirror of Self and Community
Students will understand difference and community by exploring a special place in their lives.
The Gift of Community
Building on the common early grades theme of “neighborhood and community,” this lesson uses a free, downloadable children’s book, “The Gift,” to drive home the idea that people—and their diverse interests—are what make our communities special.
Upper Grades Mapping Activity
Students are involved in many school teams, groups and organizations. These school-sanctioned groups help students find identity, increase academic commitment to school and give students friendships throughout their school experience. Still, these groups and teams often stay to themselves instead of reaching out to others. This activity asks students to consider ways they might “crosspollinate” in order to make their school experience more fruitful.
Flag Day
The American flag illustrates individuality in this lesson
Puppets and Tolerance
Blending literature and puppetry is an excellent medium to provide a safe and non-threatening environment for children to explore many life issues.
New Kids on the Block
Activity brings home the difficulties teen immigrants have fitting into a new culture.
Wants Versus Needs
The lessons that follow will start a conversation about material consumption.
Stay in the Mix ...With Summer Service!
With summer approaching, it's time to figure out ways to keep mixing it up, even after the school year ends!
What We Learn From Women and Girls
Many schools observe Women's History Month as a way to highlight contributions women have made in the past. This lesson encourages you to help students explore the positive impact of girls and women on their own lives and communities today.
What Can We Learn from a Box of Crayons?
Central elementary, a school in transition with an increasingly diverse student body, decided to focus this school year on diversity.
Core Samples
Core samples are fascinating columns of rock and mineral cut from deep below the earth's surface with a drill. They are marbled with shades of color. This activity helps students to identify their own core values, much like core samples.
Me And We: We are All Similar and Different
In this activity, students explore the ways we are all similar and different.
Justice on the Bumper
On a daily basis, we encounter disturbing, startling, discomforting, angering, humorous, ironic, sarcastic, irreverent, uplifting and insightful words and images related to social justice.
Dinner for Two
At the beginning of each term, in junior- and senior-level courses, I have my students get to know each other.
Collective Poetry
Collective poetry is an exercise designed to encourage students to work from a shared pattern in order to join their voices in a collective rhythm.
Classroom Community Building
Activities for all grades to build community in your class this year.
Borders and Boundaries
Photocopy or create a large map of the school, including the school grounds and the cafeteria. Then have students identify places that cliques or self-segregating groups gather.
Stay in the Mix with Music!
Explore how music divides - and unites.
Stay in the Mix During National Poetry Month!
How to use the written word to highlight, and counteract, social boundaries.
Put-Ups
Students are used to put-downs, but what about put-ups? This activity helps students see the positive things that their schoolmates are doing and gives them skills to affirm each other across social boundaries.
Elementary Mapping Activity
Classroom climate dramatically affects students’ lives on a daily basis. We know that a teacher can set the mood of the classroom, but so can students, through the ways they interact with each other. This sociogram helps students see their patterns of interaction and offers them opportunities to mix it up.
Romeo and Juliet Mix-It-Up
Shakespeare’s classic play is a must-read for all high school students. Might the tragic end of Romeo & Juliet have been different if the Montagues and the Capulets had crossed their social boundaries?
Boundary Crossing
Have we really learned how to break down barriers?