Example Activity Guide – Classroom Discussion

Warm-up  Have students login to Unizen and navigate to the Resources tab.

10 minutes  In the Resources tab, students should click on Classroom Discussion Forum; they will be
prompted to enter the class-code.

 Display your chosen discussion prompt for students to respond anonymously to (projector,
overhead, write on whiteboard, etc.).
o Example discussion prompt: Think of a time in the past week that someone called
you by a name or phrase that made you feel uncomfortable. What word did they
use? Why did you feel the way you did?

 Student responses will show up in real-time in the teacher-only view.

Lesson  Once you have a selection of student responses, choose one to display to the class:
o Example student response: Whenever my boyfriend talks about me to his friends, he
30-50 minutes calls me the old ball-and-chain. This makes me feel like I’m trapping him in our
relationship and weighing him down.

 Read the response aloud and ask students to take 1 minute to think individually about the
word that was used and the way it made the person feel. Ask students to consider if they
ever use that word, either in the past or present. Write the word/phrase on the board as a
focal point.
o Example word/phrase: ball-and-chain

 Pair students up in small groups to brainstorm all the things they think the word/phrase
means, situations or reasons the word gets used, positive or negative connotations they
think the word/phrase carries, and any questions they may have about it (wonders).

 After discussing in small groups, bring the focus back to the whole class. Ask groups to share
their responses or what they wonder about word/phrase.

 Once all groups have shared, ask students to individually look the word/phrase up in the
Unizen dictionary to learn about it in depth.

 After an appropriate amount of time, bring students back to the same small groups and ask
them to discuss what they learned from the app’s definition: things they discovered about
the real meaning or history of the word/phrase, things they may have misunderstood before
reading about the word/phrase in depth, and anything else relevant.

 Bring the focus back to the whole class and have each group share the things they learned
and how it reshaped their understanding of the word/phrase.
Post-activity  As a ticket-out-the-door, ask students to imagine that the scenario happened to their own
friend or sibling:
5 minutes o Now that you know how hurtful using this word/phrase is, what would you say to the
person that called your friend the word/phrase?

 This final question can be provided as something to think on as they leave class, or you can
ask students to respond in the Classroom Discussion Forum again.