Lesson Plan

Tittle of Lesson: The Effects of Labeling.

Main Idea: The labels students give each other, or names they call each other, can have negative
effects on those students.
Objectives:

Students will understand the labels they hear around the school and the negative

implications attached to them.

Students will agree to abstain from labeling one another.
Students will agree to inform a teacher if they see other students labeling students.

Materials: Index cards, Markers, tape.

Activity: At the beginning of class, students will be given an index card and a marker. They will
write one label they have heard around school; such as jock, nerd, dork, etc. Students will
then turn these labels into me, were I will shuffle them and, at random, tape them to a students
forehead. Each student will respond, respectfully, to the other students based on their labels
without ever knowing the word there assigned. This activity will continue for the rest of the class
period, until the last thirty minutes.
At that time, students will come up to the front of the class and guess their label based on
how the other students reacted to them. They will then answer simply if they liked their title,
before taking off the index card and throwing them away. After the entire class has done this, we
will have a discussion based on: Do you believe students are treated differently because of
labels? How do you think they feel with these labels at school? How can we change this at our
school? What is the best thing to do when we see students giving others labels?

Homework: Identify some labels used outside of the classroom that you have heard, and write a
paragraph about what type of person someone with this label may be seen as, and write a short
paper about how you would feel if you were the person with that label.