A Lesson in Starting a Revolution

This week I’d like to share the lesson plan that has sprung from my playing with the Squishy Circuit Kit – you may remember my homemade telegraph from here.  At any rate, I’ve developed a PBL style project based on that quirky little invention and driving to teach about context, audience and summary. Keep in mind that the lab sessions for the blended school I teach at are very flexible and can last up to a couple of hours.  The framing and timing of the lesson would need to be reworked for your own specific context.

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Driving Question:

How do you use a variety of of communication to start a revolution?

Standard Objectives:

(from the ELA Common Core Standards, underlined ideas will be the focus of this lesson)

• Literature 2 – Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
• Writing 4 – Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development organization and style are appropriate to task purpose and audience.
• Speaking & Listening 1 – Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one in groups and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics texts and issues building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

Materials:

• Copies of Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. for each student to write on/use – the link is for a PDF of the story (it has lesson ideas as well, but I would just print and distribute the short story).
• Squishy Circuit Kit & play doughs
• Access to word processor of some sort – we’re Mac folk and use Pages
• highlighters – two different colors for each student

The Plan:

1. Open with video about last year’s umbrella revolution.  Connect back to when our own country was fighting for democracy, just without social media.
2. Introduce students to the DQ.  Large Group Discussion:
   • What different forms of communication could be used in modern revolutions?
   • What might people have used throughout history?
   • How might you try to answer the DQ now?
3. Introduce the short story – In this short story a young man, tries to start a revolution.  Let’s see how he communicates his ideas and how the government responds.
4. As we read . . .
   1. Use your yellow highlighter to mark when we read the ideals the government is trying to teach everyone.
   2. Use your blue highlighter to mark Harrison’s ideals.
5. Teacher reads story aloud while students focus on marking their copies.
6. Think Pair Share – What did you highlight?  What does this help you understand?  How do Harrison’s ideals differ from the governments?  Why might they have these different views?  Which view do you agree with – why?  What main idea or theme does the story focus on?  Why do you think Vonnegut decided to write a story to share this theme?  If you had to create a hashtag to share Vonnegut’s theme, what would it be?
7. Get in Groups – Two pairs join together to create Groups.
8. Group Challenge:  “The Year is 2082” Handout.  Review handout and the different materials available to complete the three communication forms.
   • Morse Code print outs & Squishy Circuit kits available for each group – your goal is to make something that can send a message in Morse Code.
   • Computers are available for the crafting of your pamphlet – use Creative Commons for pictures.
   • You can also use computers for the letters, or there’s paper available for that as well.
9. Teacher circulates, answering/asking questions as necessary, directing to materials/scaffolds and monitoring progress.
10.  Available Scaffolds:
    • Morse Code example
    • Sample pamphlets
    • How to write a business letter video
    • How to organize a pamphlet
    • How audience affects communication
    • Squishy Circuit basics video
11. Crafting of the three messages will take more than one lab session.  Students will create online groups for their work and work after lab.  The final lab session will be devoted to sharing out with the class and reflecting on our learning.
12. Sharing Out – Groups will have copies of their pamphlets and letters to share with whole class.  Each group will also deliver their Morse code message.
    • Pass out Morse code ciphers and have other groups attempt to decode the messages.
    • Give 5 mins to read the letter – underline one thing you really like and share one thing you might have changed/added.
    • Give 10 mins to read the pamphlets – underline two things you really like and share two things you might have changed/added.
13. Group Discussions:
    • How were you able to say the same thing in three different ways?
    • Which type of communication do you think was best?  Why?
    • What did you have to do in order to summarize your ideas in the Morse code message?
    • What did you have to do to elaborate on your ideas in the pamphlet?
14. Large Group Discussion
    • Revisit DQ – How do you use a variety of of communication to start a revolution?
    • Share learning from group discussions – each group shares two take aways.
15. Complete Group Feedback sheets before leaving.

Assessment

• The writing samples themselves will demonstrate an ability to write in a variety of mediums for different audiences.
• I will rely heavily on discussions as formative assessment as we go to determine how deeply students are thinking about how purpose and audience affect the creation of a text.  Large Group Notes will be taken to track participation and the types of thinking being shared by each student.
• The Group Feedback sheets will help me determine how successfully we are working in groups and what pieces of group work need reteaching.

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Have any constructive criticism?  I’d love to hear your ideas!

Sending Out an S.O.S with Play Dough

Some weeks life runs smoothly.  Other weeks I’m bailing water by the bucket full.

Last week, this was me:

Kookaburra, H. J. (2012 July 23). “Dec.10,1993: Drama. Ex-ASR KUNGAH MARIS sinking as HMAS HOBART [II] approaches – Scott Corson Collection” [Online image]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/7627833146/

Not the best frame of mind with which to enter into creation, the exact thing, of course, which I was needing to do.

Having received my Squishy Circuit kit, the time had come to actually adapt this bad boy to my educational context.  I made the dough and spent an afternoon with my kids making LED lights light-up with play dough.  It was pretty neat, to be honest – my three year old was impressed at the very least and complained when it was time to clear the table for dinner, a sure sign of success.  (And, when the electricity went out at a restaurant we were trying to eat at last night, he actually had a decent idea of why the lights weren’t working – bonus!  Shameless mommy-brag, sorry.  Back to my “creation while drowning” experience.)

As much fun as the play dough was, I struggled to see how to connect the idea of basic circuits to Language Arts standards.  Maybe we could sculpt luminous metaphors?  It was an idea, but I wasn’t super crazy about it.

I did a bit of digging around online to try and stir up some ideas.  It was fun seeing little kids learn about circuitry, but anything more advanced seemed to require basic computers, which was a bit beyond my skill, and certainly beyond my reach for this sub-par week.

I went thrifting and found a music box which I thought I might be able to rework to run with the little motor that came in the kit.  I came home, pulled it apart as much as I could.  I couldn’t find a way to removed the right pieces without taking a hammer to the thing, so that dream died pretty quickly.  I remembered that our instructors had reminded us about the need to be comfortable with failure and tried to reframe the smashed music box in a positive light.  I couldn’t quite manage that so I wrapped the parts up so I wouldn’t have to look at them.

I pulled out another of the pieces of the kit that I hadn’t explored much yet – the buzzer.  “What a horrid noise!” I thought as I hooked it up.  I pulled it out of the play dough quickly, only able to stomach very short sounds, wondering what possible purpose such an annoying device could hold.  And then, as I was listening to the sequence of the noise, it occurred to me that this sounded an awful lot like a telegraph machine!  I made a quick makeshift play dough bridge that I could manipulate to bypass the buzzer on the circuit, looked up Morse Code and sent my first telegraph into the atmosphere . . .

S (di-di-dit)     O (da-da-dah)     S (di-di-dit).

How appropriate for the week I’d been having!  Ha!

My initial design was not user friendly, so I went around the house collecting materials I thought I might use to make a device more resembling a real telegraph machine.  I only ended up needing two of the materials – Duplos and a clothespin.  The clothespin had the right amount of tension in its spring to lift and replace the bridge.  Every time it lifted the bridge a short burst of sound could come from the buzzer making the dits and the dahs of Morse Code distinguishable. I also insulated the buzzer a bit by attaching it to a Duplo brick for the sake of my sanity.

This is what the new contraption looks like:

I’ve brainstormed different ways I might be able to reach ELA standards with a play dough telegraph.  Certainly the idea of a telegraph is to make communication as short as possible while still getting across your main ideas.  A lot like text talk, to be honest.  Hmmm . . . maybe we could teach summary that way.  Boil down a short story into a sentence easily transmitted in code.  Maybe.  A start, anyway.

This is where I ended the week:

My current plan is indeed to link the modern idea of text talk back to the days of the telegraph, and then bridge into a discussion of summary (for those using Common Core ELA has two summary standards one for literature and one for informational texts – either could be used for this idea).  The same skill of boiling down a body of text into key points and main ideas is used in each, so this shouldn’t be too difficult.  In the PBL context of the school I work for, I’m considering a driving question something like: “How can effective communication happen quickly?”

I’ll keep you posted as to my progress. My play dough telegraph can’t send an S.O.S. very far, so you’ll just have to check back here to see if this next week yields more successful results or not.

*Note: Multimodal elements help to visually tell the story, connect to readers on a personal level, provide necessary detail for DIY moments and add a overall sense of fun.

Lesson Planning in the 21st Century

Teaching Context

I work for a blended online school creating curriculum and assessing learning artifacts.  It’s a lot like teaching using FB, blogs and forums – which for me is a bit of a dream come true!  21st century skills are important to us; we like/use Tony Wagner’s 7 survival skills, but Hobbs’ 5 literacies which I learned about this week in CEP 810 (Access, Analyze, Create, Reflect and Act) are also reflected. (Hobbs, 2011)

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Lesson’s Context

The lesson is embedded within a larger PBL project introducing Researchers to WAY Program.  The final product will be a Personal Learner Profile answering the question – How will PBL work best for me?  They have four choices  – one for each of the VARK learning styles – a picture collage, a playlist, a brochure or a learning tour.  They will create something that represents and explains their learning style, setting (each kid’s home/lab set-up is different), learning goals and personal organization plans.

For this step they will focus on learning about their learning style – the goal is that this will help them embrace their strengths and develop a more robust self-concept.  One of the things that many of the 21st century skills require (whoever’s list you’re using) is that a person must learn to trust themselves and their abilities.  That is why doing some  learning about themselves at their start with the program is so crucial.  Thomas and Brown note that in order to succeed in ever changing learning systems students must “learn to generate content that represents their learning.” (2011)  In many ways this is the big aim of the bigger project, and it requires some instruction regarding learning styles here at the start.

In terms of Hobbs’ literacies, they will:

• Access:  Given resources, but must determine which will be most helpful for them in their context.  Learning to use resources appropriately by learning citation. (Access is linked with Analyzing in Wagner’s list, and both of those apply here.)
• Analyze: Read resources through the lens of “what will help me most?”  Apply their learning to their personal situation.
• Create: The final product options will give them a choice in how they communicate their learning – images, video, etc. – and encouraged to share with the learning community at large.
• Reflect: Thinking about who they are and how they can leverage these strengths pushes them to reflect on themselves in a clearer way.  This learning will also help inform future reflections.
• Act: This will come later when they leverage what they’ve learned to create personal goals.  (Linked to what Wagner calls “Initiative.”)

I’m hoping to teach them to navigate our program, understand who they are and how that impacts their learning process.

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The Lesson

Documents to Explore:

“Step 1:What Is Your Learning style?”

• Learning Collage
• Learning Soundtrack
• Learning Brochure
• Learning Tour

Students will encounter:

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References:

Hobbs, R. (2011). Digital and media literacy: Connecting culture and classroom. Thousand, Oaks, CA: Corwin/Sage.

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant changes. Lexington, Ky: CreateSpace?.

Wagner, T. (2015). “Seven Survival Skills: As Defined by Business Leaders.”  Retrieved from http://www.tonywagner.com/7-survival-skills.

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