Teacher: Juliette McBarry

Grade: PreK
Content Area: Social and Emotional Development
Lesson Date: 2/28

Content and Standards:

16.2 PK.B Identify similarities and differences between self and others.

Prerequisites:
Students should be able to identify main characteristics of themselves and others.

Essential Questions: How do my relationships with adults and peers help me feel secure,
supported, and successful?

Materials and Equipment:

Storybook (Colors of Us by Karen Katz), “The Color of Us” card game

Instructional Objective:
Knowing that people present with a variety of appearances, students will be able to acknowledge
one similarity and one difference between the characters presented in the “The Color of Us” card
matching game.

Pre-Assessment:
Inviting all students to the carpet, I will have them sit together in a circle. I will ask students to
pair up with the student sitting next to them, pointing to the pairs to help facilitate these
partnerships. I will ask students to take a few minutes to talk with their partners about ways they
are similar and ways they are different. I will facilitate these conversations by going around to
the various partners and helping them articulate their findings. Once the few minutes are up, I
will encourage students to share their conversations with the group. With this final discussion I
will be able to assess where my students' knowledge of diversity is at, and how I will structure
the following lesson for them to meet the instructional objective.

Instructional Procedures:
Full Group Instruction
Before: I will invite children to the library carpet to read them Colors of Us by Karen Katz.
Before starting the story I will remind students of listening expectations, by going over our
“listing rules” song. I will introduce the story to the children by asking them to tell me what they
see on the cover of the story. Noting how the children on the cover look similar in some ways
and different in other ways.
During: I will read the story to the children, noting the differences and similarities I see while
reading, even noting how some of the characters look like the students I am reading the story to,
or myself. I will encourage the students to also engage in this conversation to see if they notice
any similarities.
After: At the end of the story I will ask students if the characters in the story all looked the same.
After hearing their response of “no” I will ask the class to look around and see if we all look the
same? Next I will ask if we see similarities between our classmates? After this discussion is
done, I will let students know that I will be calling them over for small groups to play a matching
game where we will continue to look at characters that may look the same or different.

Small Group Instruction:

Before: I will invite children back to the library carpet in small groups to play “The Color of Us”
card matching game. I will lay out the cards and tell students that we are trying to find matches. I
will demonstrate by going first, and showing them what I do if I find a match or not. I will tell
them we are taking turns by going in a circle, and if we find a match we get an extra turn.
During: The students and I will take turns trying to find the 8 matches, while pointing out how
we know we have a match or not, what similarities or differences do we see? Do both of these
people have the same hair color or length? Are both of these people boys or girls? Do both of
these people have light or dark skin? Do these people have glasses, or a wheelchair? I will also
encourage them to make connections to other people they may know with these characteristics.
Do we know anyone at our school with glasses or short hair? Or do any of us have the same hair
or skin color as these people?
After: At the end of the game, I will encourage students to find a character from our pile that
looks most like them. I will even find a character that looks most like myself, noting how I have
brown hair and light skin like the person in the picture, but I do not have glasses or pig tales. I
will ask the students to tell me why they look like the person they chose, and how they do not
look like this person.

Differentiated Instruction:
For students F.D., D.D., and M.B. I will give them 12 matches to work with during the card
matching game. These students are older and heading off to kindergarten next year, they also
have experience playing a similar game to this previously in class.

For students A.D., J.R., and K.K., I will give them 4 matches to work with during the card
matching game. These students have a shorter attention span and have never played a game like
this before so they may need more help following the rules.