La Follette Lancer Lesson

Respecting Others: Seeking Understanding

April 11th: Extended 2nd Block

What?:Respecting Others, Seeking Understanding. The “R” in PRIDE stands for “Respect”. To earn and give respect at La Follette it is important we have an understanding of our differences. At La Follette we need to be open to the diversity of personal &cultural identities, opinions & ideas, and life experiences.

Why?:To allow students time to think about their own personalcharacteristics and to understand more about how others learn and what they need from others.

How?:Using the True Colors Personality Quiz

Staff Tip: We encourage you to take the “colors” personality quiz yourself and share with your students and co-workers.

1. (30 sec)Introduction: In our last lesson we defined respect and examined ways of handling conflict in a respectful way. Being respectful towards people doesn’t mean you always agree with them. In the last lesson you learned the “ASSERT Tool” or “I Messages”for being respectful when conflicts arise. Sometimes conflicts arise because people have different strengths and needs. An important skill is the ability to recognize differences and how these relate to interactions and behaviors in the school setting. This activity will help students understand more about their own personal characteristics and how others around them interact in group settings.

2. (30 sec.) Pass out a quiz to each student and give instructions as written on the top of the quiz.

3. (2 minutes) Allow students to take the quiz. Tell students that they may not know all of the words in each box, but that they should try to pick the one that seems most like them.

4. (2minutes) Explain how to tally the points. Use the completed quiz in your packet as an example. Allow students to tally the points.

5. (1 minute) Designate each corner of the room to be a color. Have students go to their prominent color. (blue, orange, gold, green).

6. (4 minutes) Give each group a piece of large colored paper and ask them to identify the strengths, needs, and challenges of their true color group. If there are more than 5 students for a particular color, divide them into two smaller groups. Teachers may use the following prompts:

  • As a group, what are your strengths? (Green = calm, logical, problem solver)
  • What are you like with friends/family? (Gold = serious, predictable, do practical things to show they care)
  • What are you like at work/school? (Orange = bored with routine & structure, performer, need hands-on and physical work or learning)
  • What are your challenges? (Symptoms of a bad day for blue = attention getting/misbehaving, day dreaming, yelling)
  • What are your needs in a classroom or with peers? (blue = peaceful, flexible, unity)

7. (2 minutes) Once students have identified strengths, needs and challenges for their group, hand out 2 copies of their color profile (colored paper) to each group to add additional ideas to their poster.

  1. (5minutes) Have each group share their ideas with the whole class.
  1. (3 minutes) Facilitate a brief discussion about why it might be important to know these kinds of things about each other.
  2. What themesemerge (read synopsis below each color)
  3. How could you use their strengths on a project (Blue = strong leader in groupproject)
  4. Possible areas of conflict(Gold needs punctuality, may struggle with orange that does not like structure)
  5. What to be aware of when interacting (Green is perfectionist where orange is impulsive)
  6. What to do when needs don’t match with expectations of setting (i.e. work, school, church)
  7. Orange needs to be “doing” instead of listening, but teacher and other classmates are “gold” and need rules, authority and academic routine. What do you do?
  8. Students express personality by clothing, music, language but it doesn’t match with school rules. What do you?
  9. What characteristics about yourself will help you be successful in school?

Included in this packet:

  • Blank quizzesw/ True Colors Score Sheet on back to use as example for scoring (class set)
  • Colored butcher paper (4 pieces)
  • True Colors summaries (2 of each color)

Teacher Needs to Supply:

  • 4 Markers for each group
  • Tape for posting group profiles