Ability Privilege Lesson
This activity is designed for students to reflect on their own lives and their privilege status. Unfortunately in our society certain groups can navigate with ease, while others must fight for their basic rights. Students will reflect on how their ability (able-bodied or disabled) affects their lives and how they can use their privilege to help others.
Image Description: various heights of different colored bars lined up next to one another. The words “Ability Privilege” towards the top.
Analyze a Poem for Theme - DEE the Chickadee
This lesson will help students to analyze the theme of a poem. Students will compare their understanding of how they view disability before and after reading the poem. Students will compare the message and theme of the poem and contrast the bird in the poem to the life of a person with a disability.
Image Description: Chickadee sitting in a baseball hat
Birthday Party Lesson Plan
In this lesson, students will consider what accommodations they can make in order to be more inclusive of their peers with disabilities.
Image description: Photo of cake, birthday hats and Happy Birthday banner
Build A Web - Interdependence Lesson
Students identify with each other some things they like and pass around a ball of twine. The twine represents a web and every student will be holding a part of it to keep it strong. Students will reflect on their own webs in their lives and create their own webs using crafting materials.
Image description: spider web
Calculating the Distance Lesson by Rick Hansen Foundation
In this lesson, students complete grade-appropriate math problems using facts and figures from Rick Hansen’s Man In Motion World Tour. Students will examine mathematical problems evolving out of the day-to-day challenges of Rick Hansen’s Man In Motion World Tour. Students will apply multiplication and division skills to real-life math problems. Students will apply conversion skills to real-life math problems.
Image Description: Logo of Rick Hansen Foundation.
Circle of Friends Lesson
Students will participate in an exercise and discussion on disability and segregation. In this lesson students will map out social interactions in their everyday lives. After they complete the exercise the teacher will facilitate a discussion on segregation. Students with disabilities who grow up in institutions are effectively segregated from the rest of the population, so their social circles tend to look very different from the students in class. This lesson is split into two class periods.
Image description: Overlapping circles with various disability icons inside each circle
Common Lit - Analyzing the Author's Point of View with "I'm a Disabled Teenager, and Social Media Is My Lifeline" Lesson
In this opinion piece, students will learn about one teenager’s perspective on the value of social media, especially for people with disabilities. Students will analyze the author’s point of view about social media.
Image Description: Logo of CommonLit which looks like an open book
Common Lit - Analyzing Text Structures with "Everyone Can Play" Lesson
In this text, students will learn about how video games are being adapted to meet the needs of players with disabilities. Students will practice analyzing text structures. They will understand how paragraphs build on one another and how authors organize their writing using specific text structures such as subheadings.
Image Description: Logo of CommonLit which looks like an open book
Concentric Circles Lesson
In this lesson students will contemplate how they perceive disability and explore stereotypes and misconceptions of disability through a circle discussion activity. This lesson is intended as an introductory activity on disability. Students are just beginning the discussion on disability.
Image description: rainbow concentric circles
Crip Camp Curriculum
In this collection of lesson plan, students will learn about media literacy and apply those skills to the media created for the film CRIP CAMP; will explore the concepts of power and justice, and how they relate to disability rights and disability justice; will explore the concepts of power, civil rights, and human rights, and how these concepts relate to disability rights, and then apply those skills to the media created for the film CRIP CAMP; will understand how language is connected to power and ableism; and discuss how the strategic use of power helped the disability rights movement in the US evolve.
Image Description: “Crip Camp Curriculum” in white text on green background
Critical Media Analysis: Autistic characters in children’s media
Summary:
In this lesson, students will look at four different characterizations of autistic children in contemporary media. They will watch excerpts or videos featuring the characters, read about the characters, and study how they were created. They will then fill out an evaluation chart to analyze the different depictions. They will have a group discussion as a class and write a reflective response.
Issues considered will include: character’s role within the show/movie; who was involved in writing/creating the characters; what public response has been; and so on. The lesson will conclude with a group discussion and students will complete a journal-style piece of writing as an exit ticket.
The characters that the students will learn about are:
Julia from the television show Sesame Street;
Pablo from the television show Pablo;
the main character from a Pixar short called Loop;
Carl, from the show Carl the Collector.
Image Description: Upper left quadrant is Julia, a muppet with yellow skin and orange hair. Upper right quadrant shows the main character from Loop, a girl with brown skin and dark hair who is reaching with her hands to touch reeds. Bottom left quadrant shows Pablo, a hand-drawn boy with light skin standing on a green hill with a rainbow behind him. Bottom right quadrant shows Carl, an illustrated raccoon wearing an argyle sweater.
“Different: A Great Thing to Be!” - Similarities and Differences Lesson
This lesson has five activities which can be spread between multiple days as time allows within English Language Arts blocks. Through a teacher-led interactive read aloud and whole class discussion of the story: “Different: A Great Thing to Be” by Heather Avis, students will be encouraged to identify similarities between themselves and the main character in the story, Macy, and their classmates, as well as embrace differences within themselves, Macy and their classmates.
Image Description: a light purple background with 7 different colorful birds standing on a thin branch. The text above says “Each of us is different and that’s a good thing!” The word different is bigger and each letter is in vibrant different colorful patterns.
“Different - A Great Thing to Be” Rhyming Lesson
Students will identify personal similarities and differences between peers. Students will listen to read/listen to “Different… A Great Thing to Be” and identify rhyming words. After the lesson, students will write a poem about being different.
Image Description: cover of the book "Different: A Great Thing to Be!" includes an illustration of a girl with long brown hair holding flowers. Her eyes are closed and she's wearing glasses.
Disability and Disability Arts - Physical Disability and Accessibility- Coloring Book - “A Day of Questions”
Disability and Disability Arts - Physical Disability and Accessibility- Coloring Book - “A Day of Questions”
This is a three part lesson to introduce the student to disability and a disabled artist's work. Disability arts is an art form where the context of the art takes on disability as its theme. Disability art is about exploring the various realities of what it's like to be disabled. The theme of disability may be used in a variety of ways in how the artist chooses to represent the theme in their work. This lesson uses a coloring book created by Wendy Elliot Vandivier.
Image Description: Cover artwork for the book “A Day of Questions” by Wendy Elliot-Vandivier. The background is yellow and has a drawing of a woman in a read dress with shoulder length red hair sitting in a motorized wheelchair with a service dog wearing a red vest in front of her with a question mark over the dogs head. There are 6 illustrations of children on each side of the cover facing the center with question marks in the background.
Disability Justice Lesson Plan - Education Amplifier
In this lesson plan, you’ll find six modules that you can mix and match, that all teach about different aspects of disability rights and disability justice.
Image Description: Education Amplifier’s illustration of Lydia X.Z. Brown
‘Emmanuel’s Dream’ Lesson Plan
Students will read ‘Emmanuel’s Dream’ by Laurie Ann Thompson, the true story of Emmanuel, a boy from Ghana who could only use one leg. Students will then complete a worksheet with a blank tshirt on it where they will write a word or phrase about how they are different but they are proud of that difference.
Image description: Cover image for “Emmanuel’s Dream”
How to be a Kind Helper Lesson
This lesson teaches students the qualities of being a Kind helper and how to put them into practice. Students will listen to a person with a disability and their personal assistant about what it means to be a Kind helper. After the talk, students will have a chance to ask questions about helping. Students will learn that open communication is key to a Kind helper relationship. Students will learn that a person with a disability can live full productive lives with the help of their personal attendant.
Image description: 9 raised hands with the words “How to be a Kind Helper”
Identifying Main Ideas and Central Idea with“College students with disabilities are too often excluded” by CommonLit
In this text, students learn about the experiences of people with disabilities in college and the actions that can be taken to create more inclusive campuses. Students practice finding the main ideas of each paragraph or section and then the article’s overall central idea.
Image Description: Logo of CommonLit which looks like an open book
Interdependence Lesson
This lesson will help students understand that we are all interdependent on each other.
Image description: stones leaning against one another forming an arch
Maya Angelou Lesson
In this read-aloud of a picture book version of Maya Angelou’s “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me”, students will learn about and discuss fear, what it means to be brave, and how to cope when feeling scared. Students will learn about Maya Angelou and selective mutism, which is an anxiety disorder that Maya Angelou experienced for 5 years during adolescence.
Image description: Sketch of Maya Angelou