Grasiely Teixeira de Mello Takano lives in Maringá – Paraná and has been a teacher since 1998. She has taught different classes in several private schools, both in Nova Esperança and in Maringá, including teaching foreign languages.
Currently, she teaches various disciplines in Municipal and State Schools of Maringá and has been actively working on the fields of Psychopedagogy and neuro Psychopedagogy since 2014. Grasiely shares a classroom activity based on coloring to help students reflect on perceptions created by society.
Introduction
This classroom activity demonstrates how education can have a positive impact on prejudices imposed on us in society. In my own English classes I noticed that prejudices and differences still remain a part of society and daily life, through attitudes, perceptions of skin color and even the colors of pencils. Faced with this reality, I reflected on my role as a teacher and the thinking of my 35 students in each class, I thought of how I could make an impact on their own perceptions. As a teacher you can have a big impact on your students and their attitudes. Students can learn to reflect and understand how to make positive actions for the better in school, at home and in their community.
Over the last few years, I have multiplied my English classes to 7 in total. Today I notice from the feedback I have received from other teachers, from parents, from the directive team school and friends, how much we should believe in the power of education and the impact it can have.
Classroom activity
Start the lesson by talking about colors in your native language and English. For example, talk about flowers and the difference between their colors, cars, rainbows and so on. Conduct a coloring activity allowing the students to experiment with a variety of coloring pencils. Make sure there are some images of people for students to color in, ask them to select a skin-color pencil. When I conducted this activity, most students picked salmon, peach or beige colors demonstrating that a lot of students appeared to have this misconception.
Divide the room into groups and photograph each group of students. You will then spend some time looking at the pictures with them, discussing the ethnicity of each person, their skin color, expressing how they are all unique in their own way. Ask the students to open the crayon box and find the tone that most closely resembles their skin and then discuss it with other students, using the pictures to help them compare to each other.
Using the pictures of the students, you can then ask them to create a poster, to choose sentences in English that illustrate the differences in skin tone and ethnicity. For my activity, we shared the poster on a school mural for parents to look at when they visited the school. I took the opportunity to explain to the parents about the importance of promoting meaningful moments and learning about the differences and unique features between all people. The poster is still in my classroom reminding my students to always reflect on their actions and how they can make a difference in society. You could finish the activity by asking students to express what they felt about this project and what they learnt. Whether to talk about it or demonstrate it through drawings.
Conclusion
This simple activity can help students reflect more when interacting and addressing their friends. It can help them to understand the power of their words and to perceive how much we reproduce what society imposes on us. The simplicity of selecting a color made a difference to our activities in class and helped the students understand that you can combat prejudices with your attitudes and actions in day to day life.
To read more on how cultural differences can impact learning, read Leonardo Esperanca’s blog on Teaching English in the Brazilian countryside.