Bringing cultural diversity into the classroom is becoming increasingly important. Our young learner and teen students are exposed to different ideas, traditions and voices from all over the world. This is thanks to social media platforms like YouTube, SnapChat, TikTok, and Instagram – among others.
This is a hugely positive advance because greater cultural understanding increases opportunities for studying and working abroad. However, with so many online contradictions, the world can also seem confusing. It’s our job as teachers to show students how to navigate and cope with the information they find.
By talking about cultural similarities and differences – and rejecting stereotypes – we help our students understand that the world is an extremely diverse and exciting place. In turn, this will encourage them to be more understanding and tolerant of others in the classroom, helping them to thrive in the future, if they enter an international working environment.
So here are five exciting ways to bring cultural diversity into your classroom using maps, reading materials, and images.
World maps are excellent classroom resources. You can use an online version projected on the whiteboard, a poster-sized one from a school supplier, or one that you build on a bulletin board with A4 printed sheets.
Having the world at your fingertips suddenly makes a huge planet seem much more inviting and exciting. It’s not just the places themselves but the distances, geography and diversity that can be displayed on a world map bringing new information and connections to the learners’ attention.
Build on your map throughout the year. Encourage students to add information to the map to increase their knowledge of the world as you cover different themes. Add cultural details relevant to where you teach and new places students are learning about in class.
If you create a yearbook, add a snap of the final map to show students the world they have discovered over the past year.
Build on a theme or topic covered in your coursebook by including photographs and/or commentary from students of a similar age from around the world. You can find authentic materials online using resources like (a school-friendly video platform), or search for images or articles online. Themes you could cover include; musical instruments, animals, festivals, places of interest and sports.
Then you can encourage students to share their traditions or thoughts on how their experiences relate to those you have introduced. It’s also a good idea to bring in items related to the theme that they recognize and talk through why they are important in their culture.
For example, if your theme is related to music, find a video or a set of images of children around the world playing (or talking about) traditional instruments. Bring in an instrument or two that your students would easily recognize. Ask them to share how the instruments are played and their cultural significance. They can then add their ideas to the map in the form of stories, photos or drawings.
Sometimes when we mention culture, the outcome can be to highlight differences, but we can highlight similarities too. Students can often be interested and even amazed at how similar lives across the world can be. Below are some example activities:
Use string to link the countries to an image or word-list of similarities and add to this, as topics increase.
Note that while it’s also important to show there are differences, you should be wary of stereotypes. If you are using a coursebook, look and see how many stereotypes are included – you might be surprised. Are the Inuit only shown living in igloos? Does everyone in Mexico have a sombrero? Is the most pasta eaten per person in Italy? (No, it’s the USA).
Does the stereotype give the learner a better understanding of a country or culture? How can we present a balanced view?
Most cultures are rich in storytelling tradition. This means asking students to share a story should be stress-free. Nevertheless, they may need help with the English words, so how do we prepare children to share their stories?
This can be an excellent opportunity to build a home/school link. Help students to think about a story they want to share:
Give the students time to prepare so they can bring in photos, realia etc. from home. In some situations, it might be an opportunity to invite in parents/grandparents to help with the story.
If you have tablet computers in your class let a small group of students take turns to record the stories. Have other groups create a poster for each story to add to the world map.
Providing diverse reading materials is an excellent way to introduce your students to cultures, ideas and traditions from all over the world. So perhaps it’s time to review your class library. If you can’t find authors from every continent, it might be time to update it.
While printed books are a nice resource to have, you are restricted by your shelf space. Digital readers, on the other hand, can help you solve that problem. With so many great titles available, there’s no need to limit what you have available for your students to read.
Focus on one area of the world at a time and read adapted versions of books by authors from this region. Then ask students if they have a similar story in their culture.
If you are looking to develop your learner content even more, check out our blog postThe importance of gender equality within learner content.
When you’re teaching English to young learners, you might find that there are a few students in your class who are struggling. But sometimes it can be hard to tell why. Is it because their language level is low? Or are they finding classroom work difficult because of a general cognitive difference, like dyslexia?
Do you ever find it hard to keep students focused and on task? Young learners get easily distracted and it can be hard to find ways to keep them engaged.
So what can we do to get, and more importantly, keep our students’ attention? Here are our five top tips.
Young learners have relatively short attention spans. In the classroom, it is rare to have the whole class fully engaged in something for a long time, since the children will have different interests and levels, so it is essential to plan a number of activities for each lesson.
The more variety you can include in the activities and tasks you plan, the easier it is to provide something enjoyable and relevant for each child. Choose short tasks and try to have a couple of extra activities up your sleeve if something you planned doesn’t work well. However, don’t worry if you don’t have time to do them all – you can always save them for a future lesson.
Another way of keeping students engaged is to mix up the classroom dynamics, having a combination of individual heads-down work, pair work, group work, and whole class discussions or games. When planning your lesson, consider how your students might feel at each stage. After doing some reading or quiet work, students may start to become restless, and this is the ideal time to get them up and moving about.
While you are in class, pay close attention to the mood of the class. When you sense that students are becoming distracted or bored, change the dynamics of the activity.
Ever notice that students become lethargic and show a lack of interest? Why not try introducing brain breaks at strategic points in your lessons? Brain breaks are short physical activities or games designed to get the blood flowing and to re-energize students to help them get ready for learning. They range from short activities that last a couple of minutes, to longer breaks that may be suitable if your lessons last more than an hour.
We can vary different aspects of the lesson using the previous strategies, but one thing that rarely changes is the role of the teacher! One way of keeping students involved is by giving them more responsibility and allowing them to take a more active role in their learning.
Peer teaching completely changes the classroom dynamic and has students teach their peers while you take a step back. For primary classes, ask one or two students to take charge of a ready-made activity, e.g. one from your course book. They should give instructions, demonstrate, monitor as necessary, and check answers.
When students are used to doing this, you can start to have them work in pairs or small groups to plan their own activities to use in class.
Of course, nobody is perfect and there will be times when you lose students’ attention and they are not on task. For these occasions, you can use a wealth of classroom management strategies to regain the class's attention. Here are a few techniques:
Finally, if we want our students to be motivated and engaged in our lessons, we must show enthusiasm for what we are teaching. The more lively and animated you are about the lesson, the more the students will want to join you and learn.
There is a strong link between well-being and friendship, which is just as accurate for children as it is for adults. that children with stable friendships are happier, more able to cope with stress, and have higher self-esteem. Moreover, too, and children who experience friendship adjust more easily to school and perform better academically. School friendships are also a valuable way of learning social skills like sharing, resolving conflict, and engaging with peers positively.
Having friends is an important part of school life, and teachers can play a significant role in creating a positive classroom culture and helping children and young people to form friendships. How can you promote friendships between your students? Here are some ideas:
If there is an example of a good friendship in a book you are reading with students or in your lesson materials, draw your students’ attention to it. For instance, The Jungle Book is an excellent example of a story about friendship. Encourage your students to think critically about the friendships that they read about. You can ask questions like:
By discussing friendship regularly in the classroom, your students will learn about the behavior and characteristics of being a good friend.
You can create lots of opportunities for students to build friendships with one another during class time. Design activities that call for pair or group work, and include at least one or two in every lesson. Focusing on a common goal or problem is a great way to encourage your students to bond with one another.As a bonus, this collaborative way of working promotes important 21st century skills like communication and problem-solving.
Another way of promoting friendships between different groups of students is moving them around. Adjust your seating plan regularly to ensure that all your students interact with and work alongside different classmates, to promote positive, friendly classroom vibes.
Friendship is a social skill that children need to learn – and you can help by teaching them. Be explicit about exactly what you expect from them. Saying, “Be kind” is an abstract, vague concept that children might struggle to put into practice. Instead, give them concrete examples of behavior, such as:
When you see a student engaging in these behaviors, draw attention to them and praise them.
But to really convey the importance of school friendships and kind behavior, it’s not enough to tell them. As the teacher, you must model the behavior you’d like to see in your students. Be consistently positive and upbeat in your interactions with students, thank your learners when they offer help with something, and try to refrain from sounding impatient (even when you are!). All these steps will help to build a positive classroom culture where students feel secure, supported and happy.
Conflict is an inevitable part of school life, but you can help students to navigate arguments and other difficult situations in the classroom. If two students argue, you can help them to resolve it with the following steps:
Following these simple steps teaches children a framework for resolving conflict and gives them the tools to process strong emotions.
An excellent way to promote a positive classroom culture is to do friendship-focused activities with your students:
You could do a Venn diagram activity, where students work in pairs to discuss and write down things they have in common and areas of difference. It’s good to pair students who don’t spend much time together for this activity.
Another positive activity is a 'Honey Roast'. Give students enough squares of paper to have one for each of their classmates. Get them to write their classmates’ names on the paper, and then, on the other side, write down a compliment or something they like about that person, for example, “I like your handwriting”, or “You always use kind words”. Collect the pieces of paper and read out some nice examples to the class. Alternatively, give them directly to the students to read to themselves.
