Do you mean what you say??

i had an activity go over REALLY well this week and i'll do my best to explain what i did...

it started off with this video/commercial about the word "gay"

the idea that i proposed to my students was, "if we could ban a word/phrase around our school and get the message to other students to 'knock it off!' what word/phrase would it be?"

so i had to clarify, although it would be great to ban swear words, with the campaign we would be working on, we could not make videos or posters with swear words...so here are some of the words that my students came up with

gay

freak

retard

slut

homo

lesbo

"fag"got

tramp

perverted terms

racist terms

and some other words...

then i had each class vote on two terms that they would ban if they could. kind of surprising to me, ALL my health classes chose as one of the terms, "racists terms". so that was the winner.

the following day, i told them i was turning the project over to their class and asked them to brainstorm about how we should go about this as health classes. they came up with GREAT ideas!!! videos, announcements over the intercom, flyers, brochures, going to classes and writing a message on EVERY whiteboard in the school one morning, raps, and possibly a flash mob. we have not decided what projects we will complete, so i'll keep you updated how it goes!

if you would like more details, leave a comment because that was the activity in a nutshell.

p.s. becca, i also used your "so what" idea and when we decided on the racist terms, i had them throw around a tennis ball with "so what" written on it and had my students tell me why they chose racist terms. great idea!!