TITLE:     Let's Go Shopping

AUTHOR:     Gary Miller; Whitford (Int.) Beaverton, OR

GRADE LEVEL/SUBJECT:   7-9; Language Arts or Cultural Awareness

I have used it successfully with 7th through 9th grade students.  It may be 
presented as a language arts activity but could easily be presented as a 
cultural awareness or human relations activity.

OVERVIEW:   This lesson involves observation, role playing, writing in 
character, and presentation to the class.  Students will visualize 
themselves as an observer of humanity in a given situation.  They will be 
stepping out of their own character and into the character of someone else 
(what an opportunity to teach Reach!).  They will react to a situation as 
they imagine  someone else might and then write about it.  Your classroom 
may need to be reorganized to simulate a shopping mall, but you need no 
special equipment or materials.

PURPOSE:   As this lesson unfolds, students will begin to understand how 
they observe, identify, and sometimes judge others by behavior and 
appearance.

OBJECTIVE(s):   This lesson will help kids become better observers, 
demonstrate point of view as a literary and human function, and teach 
them an important lesson about how to understand differing perspectives 
in the same situation.

RESOURCES/MATERIALS:The only materials required for this activity are a 
flexible room, imagination, and a very heavy book.  (a microphone can be 
improvised)

ACTIVITIES AND PROCEDURES:

1.  Ask students to list the different "types" of people they might see at    
a large shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon (families, kids, security    
and custodial people, clerks, retired people, "mall walkers", people       
canvassing, etc.  List as many as possible on the board.

2.  Have the students choose one character and visualize what that       
character might be doing at the mall.  Then adjust your classroom to    
accommodate movement and have the kids actually simulate their       
characters by turning the room into the shopping mall!  Encourage the    
kids to really get into their roles.

3.  After the students have been role playing for about two minutes           
( just make sure they are completely absorbed in what they are doing), 
slam the heaviest book in the room down on the floor.  Explain that a 
huge explosion has just occurred.  Instruct the students to return to 
their desks and write what just happened from the point of view of the 
character they are pretending to be. 
 
4.  Allow five to ten minutes for writing and then ask students to meet    
in small groups to read their writing to each other.  Each group should    
choose the " best" or most effective writing from their group.

5.  Select a TV interviewer from the class and stage a MAN ON THE       
STREET interview with all of the selected authors.  ( I usually choose    
one of my least successful writers as the interviewer)

6.  Discussion may follow concerning point of view writing.

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER:  In addition to being an active, fun, and creative 
way to teach a literary element, this activity helps students to see  how 
they look at others, and  how different people might have differing 
perspectives    on the same experience.  While some what slanted 
culturally (in that it assumes most kids have access to and would go to a 
shopping mall), the format allows for modification and adjustment to 
create an environment where students might enjoy the privilege of 
"walking a mile in someone else's moccasins and learning a new point of 
view.