For Primary School Teachers

Introduction activities and icebreakers
with a focus on diversity education

1. Getting Started: Respect Exercise
   Introduces the first crucial step in discussing multicultural issues: building a community of respect.  Participants discuss how they perceive respect, building the foundation of later activities. (view)

2. Knowing the Community: Ethnicity Exercise
   Continues community building. Participants introduce themselves by sharing information on their ethnicity and background, highlighting the similarity and diversity among members of the group. (view)

3. Name Stories
   Works toward bringing the stories of individuals to the fore in the multicultural experience.  Participants write and share stories about their names and nicknames, what they mean, why they were given them, and how they relate to them. (view)

4. Sharing Ourselves: "Who I Am" Poems
   Begins active introspective process while continuing to provide opportunities for individuals to make connections with each other.  Participants write short poems, starting each line with "I am...," encouraging them to describe in their own words who they are and what's important to their identity. (view)

5. Find Someone Who
   This is a good activity to do with students at the beginning of a course.  It provides a quick way for students to connect with one another and helps them overcome initial shyness in a new situation. (view)

6. Groups / Shapes / Concepts
   Fun activity to get moving, be creative and begin to conceptualise important concepts. (view)

7. Who is Different
   Purpose of game is to illustrate that no-one is 'different' - it is always in relation to something else (view)

8. Quotes Game
   A number of ways to use inspirational and diverse quotes. (view)

Portions of this material have been adapted from http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/activityarch.html