Where Do We Belong

What we will be doing today: Learning about stereotypes through your own experience.

	Children who wish may read what they have written on the theme of similarities and differences: their statements, stories, or poems. If not much was written, the teacher will ask the children to dance around to some music, and one of the pupils will photograph some scenes and portraits. These photographs will also show similari-ties and differences. At the next meeting the group can brainstorm together and write down a collective description of similarities and differences for each photograph.
	Find those you belong to. The teacher will prepare coloured dots (or stars) - three different colours: for example: red, blue, and green, plus one yellow dot. The teacher will stick the dots to the pupils foreheads while their eyes are closed; when they open their eyes, everyone sees others' colours, but not their own. Using others' reactions or help, everyone will stand with the group to which he/she belongs. During this activity there is no talking. It is not permitted to signal to someone what colour he has on his forehead or to show him an object of the same colour. The person with the yellow dot will not be invited to join any of the groups. Or perhaps he or she will be invited into one of the groups? Conversation after the activity: How did you feel doing this exercise? How did you feel when somebody invited you into the group or pushed you away from the group? How do you think a person feels when he doesn't belong (yellow) and was thrown out of the group by everybody? At the end let 's explain why people gather in groups, why they form groups. Life needs to be secure and predictable. People like to be part of a group so that they can feel wanted and needed. What do you think, what other reasons are there?
	Our perception about others. Each pupil receives a blank sheet of paper at the bottom of which he writes down some group of people whom he likes or dislikes, for example: dentists, police-men, girls, Dalmatians, Hungarians. At an agreed signal everyone at the same moment passes his paper to the first person to his left in the circle, and now everybody writes down some general char-acteris-tic for this group of people, that is, those characteristics that he has heard that these people have. Before passing his paper once again to the first person on the left; the paper is folded so that only the name of the group is showing, and the characteristics written down about the group are hidden from view. The papers are passed around until they return to "the owner", and after all the pupils have written down their stereotypes. Then the paper is unfolded and everybody reads his list of stereotypes. Discussion for feedback: Do we have somebody who belongs to any one of those groups (that were written down)? How did you feel as you were reading the list of characteristics (which characterize, for example, Dalmatians)?
	"Rainbow". At the end, we read together the story "The Rain-bow" (the Indian legend which was written down by Ann Hope in 1978). Then groups are formed and each group receives its own copy of the story and after reading again they talk about it - how they like it, what in the story was beautiful, what they feel is important... Each group tells the others what was important in the story.