Stereotypes in a Bag: Identifying, Classifying, and Analyzing Stereotypes

For more activities like this one, check out my growing series of Meaningful Morning Meeting Mini-lessons.

Students are growing up in a world that, unfortunately, continues to rely heavily on stereotypes. Even our youngest students have already internalized stereotypical and limiting ideas about others and about themselves.

This lesson is designed to help students explicitly consider the problematic and oversimplified nature of stereotypes. While this lesson focuses on gender stereotypes, it is easily adaptable to stereotypes about any group of people.

In the lesson, students sort stereotyped statements about men and women into either a bag labelled "women" or a bag labelled "men." Once the students have classified their statements, they consider the challenges of the forced choice required to sort the statements, as well as the accuracy and potential harm that might be caused by stereotypes.

This product contains a lesson plan, including discussion questions and suggestions for follow-up activities, and 20 gender stereotype cards.