How to Prepare Your Students for Diversity or Multicultural Night

How to Prepare Your Students for Diversity or Multicultural Night

Hey, y'all! Does your school celebrate students' families or their heritage? One of my favorite ways to do this is with our school's multicultural or diversity night. I've seen it done a couple of ways.

At one school, parents signed up and ran a booth themselves. Some brought food from their home country. Others brought games or trinkets. There were cultural decorations everywhere and the diversity committee arranged for dancers and musicians to come to represent different cultures from our school.  

At another school, each class was assigned a country to research and represent on the big night. We had music and dancers. Students' families were asked to donate food from the class's country. Each classroom put together a presentation about their country and it's culture.

Whichever way it's done, multicultural or diversity night is a FANTASTIC way to get your families involved in the school and make them feel welcome. (Sorry, I don't have pictures of these events. Media releases for all the people are challenging for events of that size.)

The year we were assigned a country, my first graders needed support in what to look for as we did our research. 

We were assigned Panama and I knew very little about it beforehand. But we learned together all kinds of information about the little Central American country and the kids were full of even more questions than I could keep up with. (The Panama Canal is engineering genius!)

I made this little research notebook for them to keep track of all the things we were learning about. It was so much fun to watch them put it all together.

Of course, students can also do their own research on different countries and present them in your classroom. You don't have to have a school-wide event to celebrate diversity. You can do the same thing in your classroom or with your grade level.

If you'd also like to research Panama with your class, check out the book Conejito from Amazon. It's a Panamanian folktale and will spark all kinds of discussion from your students.

When you finish, these free worksheets will help your students organize their thinking about the story and will keep the learning and excitement going!

For more information or to grab a copy of the research writing click here. And don't forget your free Conejito resources here. 

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful diversity celebration, whether it's school-wide or simply in your classroom. Stay tuned for more great resources coming soon and be sure to follow me on TPT for all the latest updates and resources. Have a fabulous week and I'll talk to you soon!

Stay cozy,