Topic: Learning about Disabilities. October is disAbility Awareness Month. Use this lesson to teach disability vocabulary and vocabulary about the 5 senses to students, while sharing the challenges and skills a disabled person might have. This is a hands on lesson with a competitive element. Follow up with students with a discussion about their feelings and a writing activity about losing a sense.
Target Group: Ages 11-14
Goal: To give students the opportunity to learn, experience and discuss disabilities and how they affect us.
Opening: Ask students what the word disability means. Ask them to name all of the different types of disabilities they can think of. Teach them basic vocabulary words, such as deaf, blind, mute. Ask them what they think it’s like to have a disability.
Activity 1: The students should be split into groups of 4. Every group will have a blind student (whose eyes should be covered with a scarf), a mute student (who is not allowed to speak), a crippled student (who cannot use his or her legs), and if possible a deaf student (who has ear plugs in). The teacher, ideally, should choose the most talkative student to be the mute, and the lightest to be the one who cannot walk in order to make things easier. All of teams should be given the same task, such as to take the entire team outside and around a certain tree, then back to where they started. Other tasks can be added, depending on how long you would like the activity to last and how difficult you would like it to be. *The instructions should be given only to the mute students, so that they must find another way to communicate the task. This is a competition. The first group to complete the task, without cheating, wins.
Closing Discussion: Ask the students what it was like. Give each group of students, such as the deaf students, the mute students and the blind students – the opportunity to share what their unique experiences were like. Ask the students what they think it would be like to really have this disability. If you would like to add facts or more specific information into the discussion, this would be a great time. Writing
Activity 2: Have the students list their 5 senses. Write what it would be like to lose one of these senses. This could be given at the beginning of the activity if the students are advanced enough – before the opening discussion, as a warm up to spur discussion. Or simply ask the students to reflect on the activity and their experience, at the end of the class.
Teach Like A PCV 