Teens and Identity Exploration

Overview

This lesson focuses on learning about the changes that can happen during adolescence, including feelings about gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual identity.

Learning Targets

  • Identify social, emotional, mental, and physical changes in teens.
  • Differentiate between sex assigned at birth, gender identity, and gender expression.
  • Create a plan to support LGBTQIA+ student rights in school.
  • Explain how support from peers, families, and schools can improve a person’s experience as it relates to sexual orientation and sexual identity.

Preparation

For the Warm-Up Activity: Write the journal question on the board or identify (and copy as needed) the worksheets you plan to use.

For the Content Focus: Open the Teens and Identity Exploration PowerPoint slides or make copies of the Note-Taking Guide.

For the Lesson Focus: Copy the Analyzing Influences Skill-Building Challenge Worksheet.

Warm-Up Activity

Select a warm-up activity to help get your class focused and on task.

  • Journal Question: How would you react if your best friend told you they identified as LGBTQIA+? Would it matter to you? Would it change anything between you and your best friend? Why or why not?
    • Option: Write or project the question and have students respond in their journals as they enter class.
    • Option: Have students discuss the question with a partner or in a small group.
  • Vocabulary Review: Have students work individually, in pairs, or in small groups to complete the Teens and Identity Exploration Vocabulary Review Worksheet.
  • Quiz: Have students complete the Teens and Identity Exploration Quiz to assess their prior knowledge.
    • Option: Collect the quiz and use it alongside a posttest to demonstrate student learning.
    • Option: Have students share their answers with a partner and then go over the answers together as a class.

Lesson Content

Review the content from the textbook lesson.

Lesson Focus: Analyzing Influences

  1. Provide each student a copy of the Analyzing Influences Skill-Building Challenge Worksheet.
  2. Review the assignment directions with the class and review the analyzing influences skill cues with students.
  3. Option: Have students work individually to complete the worksheet.
    Option: Assign students to work in pairs to complete the worksheet.
  4. When students have completed their scenarios, ask for students to volunteer to share their responses.
  5. Review as a class if there were similarities between classmates or things that surprised the students about their responses.

Challenge Activity

Have students needing additional challenge work on the following critical thinking task:

Think about the language you use and the language you hear from your peers and friends about the LGBTQIA+ community. Is it supportive and inclusive or is it judgmental and offensive? Take some time to work on using more inclusive language and to help others around you be more inclusive in the words they choose.

Reflection and Summary

Review the critical content from today’s lesson. Review the learning targets and ask students to answer each question posed.

Can you...

  • Identify social, emotional, mental, and physical changes in teens?

    Social influences relate to the increased influence friends and classmates have on you, emotional influences relate to the moods and emotions that can be very intense during puberty, mental influences relate to teens moving from seeing the world that is only in front of them to seeing the complexity in different situations as well as potential solutions, and physical changes mostly relate to puberty.

  • Differentiate between sex assigned at birth, gender identity, and gender expression?

    Sex refers to the biological factors, primarily a person’s reproductive system, that make a person male, female, or intersex at birth. Gender identity is how individuals see themselves such as people with testicles, people with ovaries, somewhere in between, or neither. Gender expression is how an individual expresses their gender through the presentation of themself and their behaviors.

  • Create a plan to support LGBTQIA+ student rights in school?

    Listen to LGBTQIA+ teens and be a good friend. Demonstrate kindness and inclusion. Speak up if you hear anti-LGBTQIA+ comments or witness bullying or harassment. Let LGBTQIA+ teens be authentic around you. Create safe spaces in your school for LGBTQIA+ teens. Be an ally for LGBTQIA+ teens and speak up to support them.

  • Explain how support from peers, families, and schools can improve a person’s experience as it relates to sexual orientation and sexual identity?

    Those who have good friends and family members who support them for who they are tend to feel much more comfortable with themselves and tend to be able to tell people in their lives whom they are close to how they truly identify.

Assessment

Complete one or more of the following assessment tasks for this lesson.

Take It Home

Ask a trusted adult if they have ever thought about their gender identity or if they know anyone who has. What questions have they asked either themselves or others about gender identity?