A quick lesson on teaching tolerance using the story “The Sneetches”

One of my favorite topics to teach is Tolerance. I love when students begin to understand diversity and how important it is to treat everyone with the same respect despite any differences. The Sneetches, a book written by Dr. Seuss, is the perfect instructional tool to use when teaching tolerance. The book is about two different types of Sneetches (star belly and plain belly) who recognize their difference and because of this, one group decides that they are better than the other. Towards the end, both sneetches realize how important it is to respect one another because they are “both the same.”

You can read the book aloud or have students watch the video.

After watching the video, we discussed as a class how the sneetches with stars treated the sneetches without stars. I asked students to think about how this story relates to them. They were then instructed to create their own Sneetch. We shared the different sneetches and celebrated the differences between them.

To close the lesson, I reminded students to remain compassionate when interacting with others. To think about how their actions and words would make others feel, and to remember, no matter how different we look…. no one person is better than the other!