The Census, which is taken every 10 years, collects information about household members. This activity allows students to explore diverse configurations that form families. This activity encourages students to think about their personal situations and their concepts of “family” and consider those of others.

In this lesson, students will analyze their thoughts and feelings to see if they currently hold any biases toward people of different ages. They will then explore the experiences of people who have faced discrimination because of their age. Finally, students will reflect on ageism.

This lesson explicitly teaches students to be more conscious of other people’s feelings to create a more accepting and respectful school community.

This lesson provides a framework that will help students talk about their own and others’ families in safe, caring ways.

This lesson leads students to analyze the nature of hate and explore legislation that addresses hate crimes.

What’s the Argument? asks students to demonstrate their argumentative and analytical writing skills.

This lesson explores the concept of fairness through questions such as: What is fair? Should all people be treated the same? What would you do if you saw someone treated unfairly? Students are encouraged to reflect upon fairness in their own lives and communities.

Almost every teacher has heard students use the expression, “that’s so gay” as a way of putting down or insulting someone (or to describe something). These lessons will help students examine how inappropriate language can hurt, and will help them think of ways to end this kind of name-calling.

What’s the Impact? asks students to demonstrate their explanatory and informative writing skills.

Where I Stand asks students to demonstrate their argumentative and analytical writing skills.

For young white students, explorations of fair and unfair, just and unjust, can go a long way in advancing anti-racist white identity. Purposeful use of literature and basic study of white anti-racists are among the key ways educators can advance such aims.Teaching Tolerance presents four short biographies for early grades classrooms, with activity ideas.

Students will examine themselves within various contexts—including family, culture and community—as a means to better understand who they are as individuals and who they are in relation to people around them. The lesson asks students to consider “Who is an immigrant?” and challenges them to dig deeper and extend their response as they come to understand themselves more deeply. Students will complete one of two extension activities at the end of this lesson: creating a cereal box suitcase or connecting with a pen pal.

In this lesson, students get in touch with their “inner scientists,” first by viewing a video of a 4-year-old solving a complex problem and then by working together to explain a discrepant event. Students also consider attributes shared by many scientists: curiosity, perseverance and the ability to problem-solve.

In this lesson, students will address misconceptions they likely have about Christopher Columbus and the colonization of what is now the United States.

In this lesson, students explore the ways that decisions by local government affect their lives. They’ll review research and data about a few recent local elections to push back against the myth that a single vote doesn’t count. They’ll learn how laws in their state encourage or suppress voter engagement. And in an extension activity, eligible students learn how to register to vote.

This reading looks at utilizing Shakespeare and theater to examine modern day violence.

This lesson is the fourth in a series called Expanding Voting Rights. The overall goal of the series is for students to explore the complicated history of voting rights in the United States. Two characteristics of that history stand out: First, in fits and starts, more and more Americans have gained the right to vote. Second, over time, the federal government's role in securing these rights has expanded considerably.

I designed a game called Origins that exposes the history and prejudice of many words or expressions commonly used in the United States.