It goes without saying that it's important to teach kids to do nice things for one another. During Respect For All Week, keep a running tally of good deeds that students perform. These can include helping clean up, consoling another sad student, sharing, helping out a friend or anything else. Tell your class that if they reach a certain number of good deeds for the week, you will bring in a treat for them. You might also try running this activity with the entire school. Have the class with the highest number of good deeds at the end of the week win a pizza lunch.
The peace tree is another activity that can either take place in a single classroom or in the main foyer for the entire school. Bring in a bare Christmas tree, either live or artificial. Ask students to bring an item from home that represents their cultural background. Have students hang their objects somewhere on the tree, along with a short note explaining the object's significance. This way, students can browse the tree and learn all about other cultures.
In Respect For All Week, it is important to show students how similar they are to one another, but they also need to respect each other's differences. Assemble your students into pairs. Give students three minutes to write down what they have in common with their partner, and what their differences are. Ask everyone to change partners and repeat. Do this exercise a few times. Assemble the class and have students discuss what the most important differences and similarities are.
Respect For All Week should also be about teaching students to handle problems maturely. Break the class into groups of two or three students. Give students a scenario that involves bullying or discrimination, such as a boy being called "gay" by his classmates, or a girl being called "fat." Have groups come up with two or three productive ways to deal with the problem and write them down. Repeat for a number of scenarios. Assemble the class and ask students for their responses on each scenario.