Pre-Listening Activity 

Time: 20 mins 

Activity: Privilege Walk

Learning Objectives Targeted: #5

Steps & Teacher Directions

• Tell students:  Please note that this exercise is not meant to make anyone feel guilty or ashamed of her or his privilege or lack of privilege related to any social identity categories. Rather, the exercise seeks to highlight the fact that everyone has varying degrees of privilege, and Affirmative Action is meant to level the playing field in regards to college admissions. The cards are all random identities and are meant to show that privilege is a societal hierarchy based on identities of individuals that are out of their control.

• Hand out Privilege Walk Identity cards (A3) in a random order to all students.

• Have everyone read their identities, and stand side by side in a line.

• Once everyone has read their identities, explain that the instructor will be reading out statements.  (A4) Based on the description on their card, the students should try to figure out how their person would respond to the statement.

• MODEL: Pick one student to model with the instructor.  Read one statement out loud. Have the student take a step forward, backward, or not move based on the statement and their card. Ask the student to tell the rest of the class why they moved the way they did, and how they knew to do so.

• CCQs: What should you do when the teacher reads out each statement? (Figure out how the identity on your card would respond to the statement)

• Have the student go back in line, and begin reading the statements. The students will be moving forward and backward based on the information on their cards.  Some inference on the student end is required for this activity.

• When all statements have been read, ask the students to read out their cards again (in order of who is farthest front to farthest back)

ASK: Does anyone notice anything about who is at the front or who is at the back? Why were these cards randomly assigned, and what does this tell you about why affirmative action came about?

Discuss.

While Listening Activity 

Time: 15 min

Activity: Guided Notes

Learning Objectives Targeted: #1 & #4

Steps & Teacher Directions: 

• Tell the students that they will be watching a 5 minute video on affirmative action (which would have been briefly introduced in the day’s warmup), and that each person will be receiving a worksheet to fill out individually.

• Hand out the worksheet.

• Tell them: that they will be watching the video twice.

  • During the first time listening, they only need to work on the front/first page of the worksheet.

  • While they listen to the video, they should write down three main ideas that stood out to them and two questions they think of while watching.

• CCQs: How many main ideas are you writing down? (Three) How many questions are you writing down? (Two) Are you working with a partner or individually? (Individually)

• Play the video at .75 speed.

• After the video ends, ask the students to share out what main ideas they heard. When this dies down, ask them to share what questions they have.

While-Listening Part 2 

Time: 15 min

Activity: What do you think?

Learning Objectives Targeted: #3

Steps & Teacher Directions: 

• When all students who want to, have shared, ask them to flip their worksheet over to page two. 

  • Explain that the class will be listening to the video again.

  • This time, they should be writing down specific pros and cons that they hear in the video. 

  • They should have at least two things in each column.

  • Tell them they should not fill out the section at the bottom yet because they will discuss that with a partner later

• CCs: How many things are you writing down in each column? (Two) When will they fill out the bottom part of the worksheet? (After the video ends and they get into pairs/groups)

• Play the video.

Post-Listening 

Time: 20 min

Activity: Discussing pro’s and con’s

Learning Objectives Targeted: #2

Steps & Teacher Directions: 

• Tell the students to find a partner. Once all students have paired up, tell them they will have [12] minutes to discuss what pros and cons they wrote down.  If their partner says something that they didn’t have written down, ask them to write it down. Tell them that once they have shared their pros and cons, they should discuss what their opinion on affirmative action is after watching this video (point to the bottom cell).

• CCQs: How much time do you have? (12 minutes) What are you writing down first? (Things my partner says) When you finish sharing, what do you talk about next? (Our opinions)

• Bring the class back together and ask the students what they talked about in pairs. Have at least one partner from each share what they discussed with the class.

OPTIONS:

During pre-listening activity, feel free to create more identities than just the ones provided. The teacher can change the flashcards and statements if they would like to for the privilege walk activity. The discussions can be done as a whole class or as pairs depending on the class size and how the teacher would like to lead the activity.

CAVEATS:

The privilege walk is a sensitive topic, so be aware of emotions this may bring up with your students.