This secondary social studies unit, part one of a series of four, contains 22 classroom activities that involve students in discovering their ethnicity. Students examine their attitudes toward ethnic groups, particularly African Americans, Irish Americans, Arab Americans, and Mexican Americans. The activities can easily be integrated into U.S. history, minority studies, world history, contemporary and world issues, and language arts courses; or they can be used as the basis for a minicourse. The self-contained activities were developed so that students can learn on their own with the teacher acting as coordinator and facilitator. Students answer questionnaires on the importance of ethnicity and on attitudes toward ethnic groups, interview their parents, compare what they call themselves ethnically and religiously with what others call them, and participate in a forced-choice activity that deals with individual and class feelings about ethnically related problems. Students gather data from a social-distance survey to derive hypotheses about relative social distance among the groups and themselves, and they are involved in an activity to check out "subconscious" racism. Student participation in the activities should be voluntary because some of the activities deal with sensitive areas. (Author/RM)