Developing learning activities

last updated:September 2010

What additional opportunities does the ethnically diverse classroom offer for developing learning activities?

Research evidence

Once teachers find out more about the backgrounds of the children they teach, they can draw on a rich variety of interesting ideas and activities to liven up the classroom.  One study identified board games such as Carrom, which are relatively unknown outside Asian communities, and the Asian practice of strand counting, in which family members count on their fingers, using finger-joints to represent one unit.

Your evidence

You could find out more about the games that pupils play in their free time, by basing a project on leisure. As a part of this, you could ask pupils to bring in a game, or artefact of a game, from home, and ask them to describe it to the class. By encouraging pupils to focus on the unusual you could increase the chances of them bringing in games that are new to you and the rest of the class. You might like to make a note of the different games pupils talk about.

Next steps

Could you use the new games and activities you have found out about to introduce new learning, or for developing existing skills?