Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Center
POST-VISIT ACTIVITIES
GRADES
6-12
Thank you for touring the Visitor Center. We hope that learning about the foundation and
partners’ work enabled your students to see their role in creating positive change!
As you return to the classroom, the following activities may help direct your students’ interest toward
further learning. Most of these ideas can be applied across many grade levels with some adaptation.
Please check with your administrator before starting a project. Some schools/districts have policies
limiting or forbidding fundraising at school, and your class may consider volunteering, using their voice,
or contributing in other ways.
We encourage you to share your ideas and results with us on Facebook www.facebook.com/GatesVC
and Twitter (@gatesvc), though please note that The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Visitor Center
do not necessarily support or endorse the organizations or links included in these resources.
Take-Away Activities
Projects to Raise Awareness
Hands-On Learning
1) Quick Write
1) Oxfam Hunger Banquet
1) Engineering Design
2) Create an Infographic
2) Documentary film
screening
2) Model UN
“Crisis Session”
3) Use Social Media to
Raise Awareness
3) Adopt a Village
or Take Part in an
Action Campaign with
Free the Children
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Center
Post-Visit Activities Grades 6-12 | Page 1
TAKE-AWAY ACTIVITIES
POST-VISIT ACTIVITIES
Quick Write
ACTI VITY
Have students reflect on their visit using a quick-write process that draws on the following prompts:
NO.1
• What was an issue that you were especially interested in before your visit? What did you learn that
deepened your knowledge of the issue? If you are already engaged in some form of service related
to this issue (or any issue), what fresh ideas for approaching the issue differently did you gain by
looking at the Gates Foundation’s work?
• What would you like to know more about in light of your visit, and why? How might you acquire
that knowledge? What organizations might be useful to you? What parts of the world—or your own
neighborhood—might you need to research or read up about in order to engage them more fully?
• What inspired you most? Why, as an issue, does it take priority for you? What smaller scale forms of
change or action do you plan to take? And how might you involve others in implementing your ideas?
Create an Infographic
ACTI VITY
Have students create an infographic of an issue they care about and share it with someone outside
the class (e.g., family, friends, community members).
NO.2
A helpful process might be to instruct students to:
1) find statistics related to a local, national, or global health issue,
2) research solutions to that problem, and
3) t ry to locate data that suggests the effectiveness of these solutions. Students with access to
computers can use an online infographic generator via Infogram (https://infogr.am) or Easel.ly
(http://www.easel.ly/).
Use Social Media to Raise Awareness
ACTI VITY
The high school student who started this “Art for Human Rights” blog uses her own artwork,
research, and writing to raise awareness about the issues that concern her most:
http://artforhumanrights.blogspot.com/.
NO.3
Brainstorm with your students:
• Which social media outlets do they use most?
• How could they use these tools to raise awareness about their favorite causes?
• Your students might also find ideas by visiting the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Facebook
and Twitter channels, or visit blog at www.impatientoptimists.org.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Center
Post-Visit Activities Grades 6-12 | Page 2
PROJECTS TO RAISE AWARENESS
POST-VISIT ACTIVITIES
Oxfam Hunger Banquet
ACTI VITY
Learning about privilege—and its impact on people’s ability to lead healthy, productive lives—
can be powerful and memorable. In this simulation, participants are randomly assigned to a
low-, middle-, or high-income group, and then served an appropriate meal.
NO.1
• Download the planning guide and check out Oxfam’s other event ideas and resources here:
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/take-action/events/hunger-banquet/
• For more action tips, check out this site with lots of ideas—from stopping bullying to
running clothing drives. https://www.dosomething.org/.
Documentary film screening
ACTI VITY
A tour of the Visitor Center often opens students’ eyes to the different realities that come with living
in different parts of the world. A film screening may deepen that experience. This might be done during
school as an assembly or after school as an event open to the community. Students might also sell
popcorn to raise money for the cause.
NO.2
We’ve offered some suggestions below. You may also ask your librarian for help finding a film on the
topic your class is most drawn to. Be sure to check the website for the film to learn about copyright and
educational use. Some film websites also provide discussion questions or other materials for educators.
Additionally, there are numerous clips, short films, and trailers available on the web related to these
and other causes.
Please be sure to preview any film before showing to students.
1) Girl Rising: “Educating girls can break cycles of poverty in just one generation, yet millions of girls
aren’t in school. Girl Rising uses storytelling to inspire action that gets girls into classrooms
worldwide.” http://www.rocoeducational.com/girl_rising
2) Flow: “Irena Salina’s award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most
important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis.”
http://www.flowthefilm.com/
3) T
ime for School series from PBS Wide Angle: This film includes “visits to seven classrooms in seven
countries to offer a glimpse into the lives of seven extraordinary children who are struggling to get
what nearly all American kids take for granted: a basic education.”
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/time-for-school-series/filmmaker-notes/271/
4) N
o Woman No Cry (Every Mother Counts): This film “shares the powerful stories of at-risk pregnant
women in four parts of the world, including a remote Maasai tribe in Tanzania, a slum of Bangladesh,
a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala, and a prenatal clinic in the United States.”
http://everymothercounts.org/ (continued on the following page)
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Center
Post-Visit Activities Grades 6-12 | Page 3
PROJECTS TO RAISE AWARENESS
CONTINUED
5) H
alf the Sky: “Just as slavery was the defining struggle of the 19th century and totalitarianism of
the 20th, the fight to end the oppression of women and girls worldwide defines our current century.”
http://www.halftheskymovement.org/.
Find video sections here:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/half-the-sky/video/.
Adopt a Village or Take Part in an Action Campaign with Free the Children
Free the Children, based in Canada, provides curriculum, toolkits, and a variety of ways to get
involved, many specifically designed for use by school-based classes or clubs.
ACTI VITY
NO.3
Take a look at the different campaigns that take place across the school year.
http://www.freethechildren.com/get-involved/
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Center
Post-Visit Activities Grades 6-12 | Page 4
HANDS-ON LEARNING
POST-VISIT ACTIVITIES
Engineering Design
ACTI VITY
Ask students to create a new tool or improve upon the design of a tool they saw at the Visitor’s Center.
Use the engineering design process as defined in NGSS to define, design, and optimize the design
taking into account criteria and constraints.
NO.1
For information about Engineering Design, visit STEM Teaching Tools:
http://stemteachingtools.org/brief/7
Model UN “Crisis Session”
ACTI VITY
If your school already participates in a Model UN—or if you’re interested in starting one at your
school—consider having students engage in a special crisis session to respond to some of the issues
addressed by the foundation’s work.
NO.2
This could include diseases that involve multi-lateral coordination for elimination campaigns,
such as malaria and polio, or it could address problems with access to safe drinking water, sanitation,
and hygiene that require action through official governmental policies.
Read up about Model UN’s online:
http://www.unausa.org/global-classrooms-model-un
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Center
Post-Visit Activities Grades 6-12 | Page 5