Diversity Lesson Plan for Middle School Students Essay

April 30, 2021 by Essay Writer
  • Topic: The effect of the Great Migration on the evolution of the diversity concept and the relationships between the American and the African American population of the United States
  • Grade/Subject/Academic Level: 7th Grade/History
  • Time: 120 min
  • Springboard/Warm-up Activity: The students will be asked to define the phenomenon of diversity and provide examples of the phenomenon and the lack thereof.
  • Reading and Analyzing the Text: The students are provided with a short (400–500 words) text on the Great Migration and the questions for discussion. The students will also be asked to retell the text.
  • Closure: The students are asked to summarize what they have learned and are provided with an assignment (a two-page essay on diversity with at least two sources to support it with).

Topic Outline with Teacher Activities and Questioning

Start by addressing the issue of diversity. Ask the students if they can define the term. Ask what effects the lack of diversity in a specific environment (within a particular state) may have on the specified state and the relationships between its residents. Help the students differentiate the aforementioned outcomes into the social (sociocultural), economic and political ones. Make certain that the students have learned the connection between diversity and equality among the representatives of different nationalities and ethnicities.

This accommodation will be beneficial for the African American students, who are experiencing difficulties in integrating into the classroom environment and find it complicated to communicate with their peers, who have little to no idea about the culture of the African American people. It should be noted, though, that the given lesson on diversity and the trials and ordeals that people have passed through in order to attain high diversity rates in the modern society are targeted mostly at the European American students. In other words, the lesson is supposed to serve as the tool for the European American students to learn more about the specifics of the African American culture, as well as the difficulties, which African American people traditionally experience in the realm of the present-day America.

Ask the students if they know what the Great Migration is. Tell the students about the Great Migration and the factors that triggered it in detail. Provide the students with a short text about the Great Migration and prompt a discussion of the material. Suggest the students analyze the factors that have contributed to the Great Migration, including the sociocultural, the economic and the political ones. Prompt the students to define the lack of diversity based on their knowledge of the Great Migration. Suggest the student to analyze the effects that the lack of diversity in the North had on the process of the Great Migration.

This accommodation exercise, in its turn, will provide the European American students with a chance to gain more insight on the mistakes that have been made by the American population in the process of recognizing the culture and rights of the African American people. Thus, it will be possible to allow the students to understand the necessity to appreciate the culture of the people of other ethnicities, nationalities and races.

Provide the students with an opportunity to evaluate the factors contributing to the fast integration of the African American population into the environment of the North. Based on the results of the previous activity and the outlined factors that may have caused complexities with the introduction of diversity into the northern states of America, allow the students to define the significance of cultural awareness and the links between the latter and the phenomenon of diversity.

The given activity can be used as the accommodation tool for the students to learn the history of the diversity evolution in the United States.

Trick the students into developing the ideas of the Great Migration into the concepts of multiculturalism and diversity. Help them understand the concept of multiculturalism and diversity. Explain what goals and purposes the members of the Great Migration pursued. Ask why the Great Migration was successful in the economic aspect of the process and lacked efficacy in the cultural outcomes of the movement. Help the learners develop the idea of human needs, thus, leading them to the understanding of the Maslow’s needs hierarchy. Mention the issues of integration and segregation as the key outcomes of the Great Migration. Provide the students with the statistical data regarding the Great Migration and ask what area they consider to have witnessed the most radical changes in the diversity rates. Make a connection between the Great Migration and the diversity rates. Ask why diversity is important and what effects the lack of diversity may lead to.

This activity will be utilized as the accommodation tool for students to accept the concept of diversity into their system of values and apply it in the process of communicating with the representatives of other ethnicities and races, particularly, the members of the African American community.

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