Diversity and Multiple perspectives in my lesson plans

     My school is an international school. We don’t have different minorities, only Chinese and mixed-nationality students. As well as this, we always have new students transferring from other schools. Therefore, I designed the activities according to the following prospectivies: 
            1) Students from different backgrounds;

            2) New students (newly transferred this semester) and old students (studying in this school since Grade One);

            3) Students with different English levels.

      Here are the reasons I designed the activities from above prospective:

             1 Since the topic of this unit is holidays, I let students use the questions: “Where did you go on your holiday?” to let them know each other more. All Chinese students know that there are some students in the class who look differently from them, but they don’t know why. Students may talk about the place they never heard about, or maybe that place is the hometown of one student. They will be interested in knowing more about that place and that student.

             2 We always have new students transferring from other schools. And the English books we use are different from other schools. Our English textbooks are from Singapore. It’s much more difficult than other schools, especially compared to public schools. Hence there is a gap between the “old” students and newly transferred students.  Most of those new students are not so confident in English class. I always design some activities to make them realise they are not alone in the class. They always have someone who has the same challenge as they are having. And once they try, they can do it.

            3 I can say every class has different level’s students no matter how good or bad that class is. Therefore, it is important for a teacher to design activities to cover different levels. Because I always believe “No one should be left behind.” At the same time, I always try to assign the strong one to help the weak one without being noticed by them.

     In my opinion, there is no standard for cultural competence in the class. I always ask myself after the class: "Did all my students get involved in the class? Did they enjoy the class? Did they know each other better today? Are they getting closer now in the class?” If all the answers are “yes”, then I think they are developing cultural awareness in the class. If there is “no “in those questions, I will rethink of my plan and my class, and find the problems and solutions.