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Name: Sydney
Sherman
School: Needham
st
Grade Level: 1
Number of Students in Class: 25
Unit: Anti-Bias
Lesson Duration: 40
Day, Date, and Time of Lesson: November 11, 2016
1. Objective(s): By the end of this lesson, students will be able to give examples of how
people in different places are alike and different by comparing and contrasting themselves with
others around the world.
2. Colorado Academic Standards:
Social Studies, Standard 2. Geography:
People in different groups and communities interact with each other and with the environment.
Evidence Outcomes:
d. Give examples of how schools and neighborhoods in different places are alike and different
(DOK 1-2)

Anti-Bias Standards:
Diversity 7- DI.K-2.7 :
I can describe some ways that I am similar to and different from people who share my
identities and those who have other identities.
3. Learning Target(s):
I can explain what is the same and what is different between me and my classmate
I can explain what is the same and what is different between myself and others around
the world
4. Assessment:

Look for understanding during group activity (Compare and Contrast Chart)

Walk around during activity to look for understanding, ask students questions, and to
help those who need help.

Take Notes on a student name list (do this during activity as well as sharing time)

Collect both the Compare and Contrast worksheet and the Who am I work sheet to

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assess students understanding of the lesson.

5. Materials:

Big Chart Paper

Markers

Compare and Contrast worksheet

Book - Whoever You Are by Me Fox

Who am I work sheet

6. Essential Questions or Big Picture Statement:

Are all of us in this classroom, the same or are we different? Can we be both? Lets explore
this idea and see what Mem Fox has to say about who we are in her book, Whoever You Are.
7. Technology Resources and Skills:
Students will use Doc Camera to share work
8.
Introduction/Anticipatory Set: (5 min)
Have students meet you on the carpet in front of the white board.
Hi class. Do you remember at the beginning of the school year, we drew ourselves and what
makes us who we are in an about me activity. We did this so that we could get to know our
classmates and tell them about ourselves right? And when we made these, do you think they
were all the same? Did you all draw and write the same things? Well, today we are going to
talk a little more about what makes us who we are. I am going to read you a story soon but
first I want you to just think about a few questions. Are all of us in this classroom the same?
Or are we different? Can we be both? Lets explore this idea and see what Mem Fox has to say
about who we are in her book, Whoever You Are. Whoever you are is a book that goes around
the world to look at the lives and characteristics of others around the world. You will see
illustrations of people in this book from these areas around the world (Point to places on the
world map). While we are reading this book, lets think about the similarities and differences
we see in this story and then we will fill out this compare and contrast chart together."
Read and Talk (10 min)
*Read book and then show the chart to students. Have categories already mapped out on the
chart with pictures next to the words. Categories should include all subjects brought up in the
book ( Clothes, homes, feelings, smiles, etc.) and maybe a few new topics to see if students
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understand the concept. Go through the chart with students as you read the book. Ask the
students for every category Same or different? First have students raise their hands and
answer. If it seems like most the class is raising their hands or understand the concept then
have the students answer together. After the chart is filled out, reflect on the theme you see on
the chart and in the book. Our hearts and feelings are the same all around the world but our
houses, skin, schools, clothes, and beliefs are different around the world (cultures).*
*Turn and Teach - have the students turn to a partner beside them and find one similarity and
one difference between the pair. Give them about a minute to talk and then ask if students want
to share the similarity and difference between them and their partner. Relate the students
answers to the chart. Only call on a few kiddos so that you have time for the activity. Explain
the following activity to students. Ask for them to give you a thumb matching their feelings
toward understanding their next activity. Those who's thumbs are down or they looked
confused, call over to you so that you can explain the activity to them again. Those who have
their thumbs up are told to get two Venn diagram worksheets for them and a partner. Hand the
worksheets out one by one to avoid chioas.*
Activity 1 (10 min):
To check for understanding of the text and to get the students practicing their similarities and
differences, have students pair up and fill out Venn Diagrams. On the Venn Diagrams, students
will compare and contrast traits of themselves. Make sure to mention that students should be
comparing and contrasting the traits we talked about while reading the book. Circle the room,
checking in with students and asking what connections they are making to the book. Tell
students that after about 10 minutes or so, we will wrap up and a few friends will be able to
share our charts.
Activity 2 (10min):
*Explain the activity and then have students do the activity. Walk through the culture stations
with the students. There should be 4 stations. Each one representing a different geographical
location and culture. There should be artifacts and pictures at each station that represent the
categories we went over in the book and on our chart. Students will fill out on their worksheet
with what similarities and differences they have with what they see at each station. Make sure
to do at least one example with your students before letting them loose. Organize groups by
students with mixed skill levels. Walk around, offering guidance when needed but also assess
students with questions. Walk around and observe students and write down your observations
on a list with students names. When students have rotated through each station (2 min per
station), have them turn their worksheets into Mrs. Eskelis basket.* (This was not taught in
my field placement lesson. I would have loved to do this but I realized that this could be a
lesson in itself. Ideally, I would like to use this mentor text for a few lessons done on
different days.)
Activity 3 (10 min):
*Pass out Who I am coloring sheets. Have students color the body template like themselves.
Then fill out the sentences. We are the same because _______ and We are different
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because________. (Or just have students write two sentences about how they are the same
and different than the people in their classroom or the people they observed during the station
activity.* (This was also not taught in class. I think that this would be a fun way to end a
series of lessons surrounding this mentor text. Students would reflect and give a final
conclusion on how they are the same and different than others around the world. And
you would have hallway worthy art work to put up!)
Share (5 min):
*Gather students at the front of the class room with their Who Am I papers. Ask for students
who would like to share their work on the doc camera. For each person who shares, let them
choose one person to tell them what they liked about their piece. Have as many students share
as you can within 5 minutes. * (This did not happen because we did not do the Who I Am
worksheets. Instead, we shared our Compare and Contrast Venn Diagrams.)
Call up students who completed their charts and showed good behavior to share with
their partner similarities and differences they found. After each share, ask students
questions like "if these things traits are the same and different between these students, do
you think they may be the same and different with a student in this country (point to
map). (Ideally this would be an expansion piece that you could connect to the next lesson,
Activity 2, where the students are doing more of comparing and contrasting with people
around the world).
Closure (5 min):
Make sure to go back to the learning targets. Tell students what we learned today and what we
can do now. - Today we talked about how what makes us who awe are us both the same and
different than others in our classroom, our community, and even around the world. You can
now compare and contrast between different schools, communities, cultures, and people. You
can explain what is the same and what is different between you and your classmates. Whoever
You Are taught us that no matter who we are, what we are like or how we live, we can all live
in the same world, community, or even classroom together and get along by accepting our
similarities and differences! I loved hearing your ideas and thoughts on similarities and
difference in the world, today! We notice when you are trying really hard and I hope that you
enjoy learning about each other and the world, because I certainly do. Mrs. Eskeli and I would
love to see all that hard work you put into these Who am I papers and Venn Diagrams. Please
put them in Mrs. Eskelis basket and find your seat.
9. Differentiation:
When you are walking around the classroom observing and assessing and students seem
confused, arent participating or ask for help, briefly sit and do a couple of compare and
contrast examples with them. Dont do the work for them! Students who are struggling with
writing may have a hard time writing complete sentences for their Who am I sheet. Ask them
to try their hardest and write as much as they can but do not expect more than a few words for
each sentence. For students who are advanced writers or come up and say Im done before
time is up, ask for them to keep going, write as much as they can, and expect at least two
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sentences for similarities and at least two sentences for differences.

Activity 2:
NAME: __________________________________
__________________________________

DATE:

At each station, draw or write at least one thing that is the same and one thing that
is different between you and what you see in the stations.
1.
SAME:

2.
SAME:

DIFFFERENT:

DIFFERENT:

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3.
SAME:

4.
SAME:

DIFFERENT:

DIFFERENT:

Activity 3:
WHO I AM COLORING SHEET:
NAME: _____________________________
______________________________

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DATE:

I am unique because
___________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
I am the same as others
because__________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________

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Activity 1:

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Sydney Sherman
ED 447
December 8, 2016
Field Evaluation
Whoever You Are
I found this lesson to be one of the harder ones I have created and taught. I
am not sure if it is because I had so much I wanted to do but not enough time or
maybe it was because the concept was a little hard for my students to grasp.
Whatever it was and although this lesson did not come easy to me, it ended up
turning out just fine. There are certainly some things that worked well with my
students and there were also things that did not go as well or as planned. I have
come to the conclusion that it is okay if a lesson turns out to be more challenging
than thought to be in the beginning. Although I had trouble, my multiple attempts of
revision, closer look into the purpose of the lesson, and talks with you, Chiara, and
my CT, helped create a successful anti-bias lesson plan.
In my final revised lesson plan, I have mentioned areas I revised and did in
the classroom as well as things I had or added to the lesson that I did not do in the
classroom. Part of this is because I simply did not have enough time to do all of the
things I wanted to do with the kids in my placement. Part of this is also because as I
continued to work on the lesson plan and talk with mentors about it, I thought of
different activities that I could do for this lesson. Something I struggled with while
writing this lesson plan was choosing what activities to do with the students that
connected with this text. I wanted to find a way to fit all three activities in but it just
was not realistic. I found myself wanting to do too much with the students, not
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taking into account how long each thing would take. The read aloud itself took a
while because we were having a discussion and feeling out a chart together. After
the lesson was written, revised and I was more clear on what to do in the classroom,
I still came across a few difficulties.
The first challenge I came across in my classroom was my students' behavior.
The kids had just returned from recess and they were rambunctious. Getting them
to settle down was a lesson in itself. Then throughout the whole anticipatory set and
reading, I had difficulty getting the students to listen, focus, and show respect for
me and their fellow students.
Second challenge: my students love to compare and contrast and they
certainly love pretty books like Whoever You Are, but the concept of traits other
than physical and materialistic ones was hard for them. I read the book to the class
and as we were moving along, we would stop every time a trait on our chart would
show up in the book. We would then check the same or different box next to each
trait. This the students seemed to understand so that was exciting to me. Turns out
the words in the book which said whether the trait was same or different was what
was giving the students the answers but they did not quite understand why our
finished chart looked the way it did. This required extra teaching and clarification
after the reading, which is completely okay but not what I was expecting. This
challenge as well as another showed up again while the students were doing their
compare and contrast Venn Diagrams in partners. Students were focusing a lot on
materialistic things as well as physical traits. I heard very little talk about "inside"
traits such as our hearts, our feelings, our blood, etc. I needed to hint or ask
students questions to get them to dig deeper into this concept. I instead heard a lot
of "We both have blonde hair" or "both of us like to go horseback riding".
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Then arouse another problem linked to the first challenge I came across
during this lesson. Students who were not showing proper respect or were focused
on things other than the lesson, were completely lost. Even though I had talked with
and taught a group of students separately who seemed not to understand what they
were being asked to do before the activity, there were still a few students who
weren't quite understanding because they simply were not paying attention. After
lots of one on ones and check ins with each pair, students finally started to
understand and make connections between the activity and the book.
This of course took way longer than expected so my last challenge I came
across was time and lack thereof. I ran out of time and we only had the chance to
share one Venn diagram before needing to close. Unfortunately, the sharing and the
closure of my lesson plan was rushed. This saddened me because I know how
important those pieces are to the lesson. With all these difficulties in mind, the
lesson did not turn out entirely horrible. In fact, the challenges we faced in the
classroom were all teaching points in themselves and although are lesson was a bit
sloppy, my students ended up getting over these difficulties and learned a great
lesson about themselves and others in the world.
I am thankful for these many challenges because they help me in preparing
for other lesson plans, they teach me meaningful lessons, and they show me that
there is always room to grow as a teacher. Not only is there room to grow, but there
are also challenges that every teacher will come across that are unexpected and
uncontrollable. My CT has taught me this semester that lesson plans rarely go as
planned and that you get better at it as you go. She has assured me that I am going
to have fantastic lessons that go wonderfully as well as lessons that do not turn out
as great as we hoped they would. I am growing and learning constantly and
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although this lesson plan was more challenging than I had hoped, I learned a lot and
ultimately see the importance of anti-bias lessons in the classroom.
The most important positive that came out of this lesson was that my
students learned something valuable. Although we came across some difficulties
along the way, I really felt that my students understood the lesson and the light
bulb clicked. This light bulb may not have turned on until the very end of the lesson
but nevertheless, they got it. I love that feeling of overcoming difficulties with my
students. Whatever the reason may be, sometimes they just do not get it and they
need help or support. As soon as this is given and they commit to working hard and
putting forth effort, they will get it. I loved watching this in my students during this
lesson. Although the reason many of these students were having trouble was
because they were not paying attention, I still pushed students to work hard to get
back on task and think about what I was asking them. When this growth mindset is
enforced, I see my students shine. For whatever reason, some of my students had
difficulty but they all ended up enjoying this lesson. They liked talking about people
around the world and how they could have similarities with them as well as with
their peers.
I thought that I was doing an alright job integrating Culturally Responsive
Pedagogy strategies into my lesson but my students' confusion questioned my
thoughts a bit. I realize now that emphasis of my lesson should not have been on
same and different but instead on what makes us who we are, our characteristics
and traits. I wish I had gone into depth a bit more about our "inside" characteristics
versus our "outside" characteristics and why these characteristic were the same or
different. I think I could have talked about culture more and let students talk about
their cultures so that there was a family connection. Although maybe my
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expectations weren't entirely clear in the beginning of the lesson, I tried hard to
make my high expectations of my students clear. I made sure that I was creating an
environment where they felt respected by me and knew that I believed in them and
their capabilities. There is a lot that goes into a culturally responsive classroom and
although I may not have used all strategies possible, I tried my best to create a
lesson that encouraged cultural acceptance and community in the classroom.

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