I have used it successfully with 7th through 9th grade students. It may be
presented as a language arts activity but could easily be presented as a
cultural awareness or human relations activity.
OVERVIEW: This lesson involves observation, role playing, writing in
character, and presentation to the class. Students will visualize
themselves as an observer of humanity in a given situation. They will be
stepping out of their own character and into the character of someone else
(what an opportunity to teach Reach!). They will react to a situation as
they imagine someone else might and then write about it. Your classroom
may need to be reorganized to simulate a shopping mall, but you need no
special equipment or materials.
PURPOSE: As this lesson unfolds, students will begin to understand how
they observe, identify, and sometimes judge others by behavior and
appearance.
OBJECTIVE(s): This lesson will help kids become better observers,
demonstrate point of view as a literary and human function, and teach
them an important lesson about how to understand differing perspectives
in the same situation.
RESOURCES/MATERIALS:The only materials required for this activity are a
flexible room, imagination, and a very heavy book. (a microphone can be
improvised)
ACTIVITIES AND PROCEDURES:
1. Ask students to list the different "types" of people they might see at
a large shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon (families, kids, security
and custodial people, clerks, retired people, "mall walkers", people
canvassing, etc. List as many as possible on the board.
2. Have the students choose one character and visualize what that
character might be doing at the mall. Then adjust your classroom to
accommodate movement and have the kids actually simulate their
characters by turning the room into the shopping mall! Encourage the
kids to really get into their roles.
3. After the students have been role playing for about two minutes
( just make sure they are completely absorbed in what they are doing),
slam the heaviest book in the room down on the floor. Explain that a
huge explosion has just occurred. Instruct the students to return to
their desks and write what just happened from the point of view of the
character they are pretending to be.
4. Allow five to ten minutes for writing and then ask students to meet
in small groups to read their writing to each other. Each group should
choose the " best" or most effective writing from their group.
5. Select a TV interviewer from the class and stage a MAN ON THE
STREET interview with all of the selected authors. ( I usually choose
one of my least successful writers as the interviewer)
6. Discussion may follow concerning point of view writing.
TYING IT ALL TOGETHER: In addition to being an active, fun, and creative
way to teach a literary element, this activity helps students to see how
they look at others, and how different people might have differing
perspectives on the same experience. While some what slanted
culturally (in that it assumes most kids have access to and would go to a
shopping mall), the format allows for modification and adjustment to
create an environment where students might enjoy the privilege of
"walking a mile in someone else's moccasins and learning a new point of
view