Activities for raising awareness of diversity
Our first goal as language teachers is always to encourage our
learners to make use of their developing language. Giving them a
genuine communicative purpose and making it personal to them
are two good ways of achieving this. For students beginning their
journey to greater self-awareness, teachers could devise an
inventory of learning skills for them to rate themselves on. This
could include items such as ‘I keep my notes in order’, ‘I always
make a note of homework and the date it should be done’ or
whatever is appropriate to their level. Students could rate
themselves privately, but then discuss with other students which
ones they find most challenging, exchanging tips about how they
could improve these aspects of learning. From these discussions,
it will probably become clear that some students have already
got good study strategies in place, even if some of them seem a
little unusual. Revisiting the checklist later in the course helps
learners to reflect on how they have improved and what they still
need to work on. […]
Making use of materials that include a diverse range of
characters is another great way of initiating discussion and raising
awareness of the issues. There may be no explicit mention made
in the text of this diversity, thereby sending the implicit message
that this is just how the world is. Students may see characters
that they can relate to more easily, and feel more included
generally. Other materials, such as the ‘Adventures on Inkling
Island’ comic strips, explicitly showcase the daily challenges and
talents of neurodiverse people, demonstrating that being
different can be a strength in some situations.
A powerful way of enabling people to understand how it
might feel to be in the minority on a daily basis, whether in terms
of physical abilities or cognitive function, is to set up experiential
activities which challenge the participants to perform unusual
tasks in conditions that make their usual way of working
impossible. As well as being a fun way of introducing the topic for
further discussion, these activities are usually very memorable
and drive home the message that – in the vast majority of cases –
lack of success in academic tasks is not due to laziness or
stupidity.
Adapted from: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/raising-awarenessdiversity-language-classroom