The “Lesson in the Tolerance centre” programme

Each lesson in this programme begins with interactive voting, employing the Tolerance Centre's interactive infrastructure. Participants answer several focused questions via the individual i-pod provided for each work station at the Centre. A frontal discussion takes place on the voting results, after which the schoolchildren watch a short video film, made specially for each session.

Registration

Short description:

A frontal discussion takes place on the voting results, after which the schoolchildren watch a short video film, made specially for each session.

Then comes a training module. The work takes place in small groups of 15-20 people, using a wide range of methods of interactive teaching techniques: roleplays and simulation games, creative exercises, brainstorming sessions and others. The purpose of the training module is to create the conditions in which the schoolchildren can receive the experience to enable them to make their own conclusions and insert them into the structure of their own world view.

The programme is elaborated in correspondence with the suggested teaching curriculum on social sciences, although the lessons are also well recommended as extracurricular events in forming a culture of social and inter-ethnic interaction.

The programme is made up of 5 sessions:

Friendship in Class: Nobody is Unneeded (interpersonal tolerance in the collective), school years 4-5
We are a Multinational People (accepting the wealth of Russia's ethnic diversity), school years 6-7
Cooperation and Competition (methods for constructive conflict resolution), school years 7-8
Inter-ethnic Relations: People and Peoples (the bases of the psychological mechanisms behind intercultural communication), school years 8-9
Youth Subculture (preventing youth xenophobia and extremism), school years 10-11

Aims:

To assist in the formation of a tolerant attitude and guard against xenophobia and extremism among schoolchildren
To facilitate the active employment of the teaching material on the theme of tolerance
To present educational institutions with additional possibilities for the reduction of social tension in schools

The Programme's aim is to have an impact on establishing tolerance among schoolchildren, reducing social tension in educational institutions.

The Programme's fundamental principles are:

Integration into the curriculum on social science studies. Lessons in the Tolerance Centre supplement (but do not replace!) going through the teaching material in class, creating the motivation and emotional engagement required.
The Programme places emphasis on the emotional involvement of schoolchildren, creating for them real experience that facilitates the formation of a tolerant world view.
The Programme is focused on cultivating permanent contacts with educators, providing them with consultative support.

The realisation of the Programme will involve, on prior registration, a group of schoolchildren coming to the Museum in the company of their teacher to study defined themes as part of their teaching curriculum or extra-curricular work. The Tolerance Centre staff then conduct for them the interactive event “A Lesson In The Tolerance Centre,” lasting around 1.5 hours.

Target groups: schoolchildren of years 4-11.

Timetable: on request of the school.

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes.