Statement of Purpose:
A. Academic goals
The goal of this lesson plan was to have the students learn these IB- and subject-specific related skills:
B. My own burning questions were (aside from whether the kids could handle an assignment this long and this conceptually difficult:)
C. Topic
I decided to look at the Nazi and Soviet regimes between the world wars, and use the novels 1984 and Feed to explore the repercussions of totalitarian regimes on their populations, to see if the kids could understand the experience of individuals and what it means to have every aspect of your life dominated by the government.
The history plans/resources are located here, along with our linking activities:
D. Process
We started by just looking at the document and tabbing out what they knew about the document, what they’d like or need to investigate further truly understand the document (inquiries)
At several different stages in our novel and history studies I asked the students to tell me what they had learned about the documents as they were going, to answer their investigation questions. Some of their responses were collected here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/student-summaries.html
I decided to follow the engineering design process to help them figure out how to structure their essays: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/engineering-design-process/engineering-design-process-steps.shtml
As preparation, we wrote many short one page essays based on our two novels that asked the students to compare and contrast the books according to certain questions, which required the students to eliminate unnecessary writing and concentrate on concision and precision. Those examples and their stages of construction are located here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/1984-and-feed.html
With respect to the main assessment, I had them create schematics that identified the problem, the criteria and constraints, brainstormed possible approaches, identify the strategy that worked best to meet the criteria and constraints, and prototype their model (develop their evidence). Some examples are posted here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/schematics.html.
The students wrote a first draft, received peer critique, and then critiqued their own writing, always with respect to the rubric. They then followed this up with a second round. I placed their drafts on the weebly page so students could access these drafts. Here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/rough-draft-1.html, and here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/draft-2.html
The final essays themselves are located here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/final-essay.html
E. Final Step
The final assessment is the following task (taken verbatim from my Edmodo site:)
“The real test of whether you are successful at writing may be based less on what you actually churned out from our assessment at the end of the 3rd quarter, but rather, your own sense of your success in meeting all the criteria.
So, this will be a better gauge of your understanding of how to think about historical documents, or how to think about causation, or how to do comparison and contrast, or how to set up a logical argument and follow it to its conclusion.
Step 1: What you will do is, consistent with our activities thus far, is critique 3 of the essays on this page: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/final-essay.html using our rubric (linked below)
I want you to find a mastery level essay, a target level essay, and a developing essay and write a thorough, lengthy critique that explains why each one deserves to be in that category. If you just circle the characteristics on the the rubric and give that to me in lieu of writing, that will be considered a zero. Do not choose your own for any of those categories (as you will see for Step 2)
This step is due on Monday in the form of a Tumblr blog post
For step 2 of this process, you will take another look at your essay and write a two page reflective paper that discusses the following prompts:
*what overall grade do you give yourself?
*which aspects of your paper do you feel hit mastery, target, or needs development?
*which aspects of your writing do you feel have improved over the course of the year?
*which aspects of your writing do you feel you still to work on, overall, for next year?
*which activities from this year were successful for you, which you were not, and what you suggest adding for next year?
Post this to Tumblr when you are done”
These critiques are located here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/blog1.html
F. Resolution
Do these activities show evidence of rigor and critical thought, but more importantly, do they resolve any of my burning questions?
The goal of this lesson plan was to have the students learn these IB- and subject-specific related skills:
- document analysis - thinking about origin, purpose, value and limitation of documents
- causation - why historical events occurred or sorted out the way they did
- comparison and contrast - looking for similarities and differences, looking for patterns or breaks in patterns
- essay writing and structure
- peer and self critique
- linking together history and literature - using each to help understand the other, and situating literature in its historical context
- moreover, I wanted students to write multiple drafts and evaluate their own work.
B. My own burning questions were (aside from whether the kids could handle an assignment this long and this conceptually difficult:)
- Could I create a more comprehensible structure for writing, and one that would be a better gauge of student writing and comprehension?
- Could I structure a writing system they were familiar with (the engineering design process) from the project work we had been doing thus far?
- Could I adequately stress the process of writing in a more meaningful way?
- Could I get them to empathize more with people living in historical dictatorships through fiction?
- Could I create a humanities lesson that fully integrated the history and literature, that treated each discipline as a craft but also integrated them meaningfully?
C. Topic
I decided to look at the Nazi and Soviet regimes between the world wars, and use the novels 1984 and Feed to explore the repercussions of totalitarian regimes on their populations, to see if the kids could understand the experience of individuals and what it means to have every aspect of your life dominated by the government.
The history plans/resources are located here, along with our linking activities:
- http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/history-resources-through-wwi.html
- http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/history-resources---nazis.html
- http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/history-resources---nazis.html
D. Process
We started by just looking at the document and tabbing out what they knew about the document, what they’d like or need to investigate further truly understand the document (inquiries)
At several different stages in our novel and history studies I asked the students to tell me what they had learned about the documents as they were going, to answer their investigation questions. Some of their responses were collected here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/student-summaries.html
I decided to follow the engineering design process to help them figure out how to structure their essays: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/engineering-design-process/engineering-design-process-steps.shtml
As preparation, we wrote many short one page essays based on our two novels that asked the students to compare and contrast the books according to certain questions, which required the students to eliminate unnecessary writing and concentrate on concision and precision. Those examples and their stages of construction are located here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/1984-and-feed.html
With respect to the main assessment, I had them create schematics that identified the problem, the criteria and constraints, brainstormed possible approaches, identify the strategy that worked best to meet the criteria and constraints, and prototype their model (develop their evidence). Some examples are posted here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/schematics.html.
The students wrote a first draft, received peer critique, and then critiqued their own writing, always with respect to the rubric. They then followed this up with a second round. I placed their drafts on the weebly page so students could access these drafts. Here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/rough-draft-1.html, and here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/draft-2.html
The final essays themselves are located here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/final-essay.html
E. Final Step
The final assessment is the following task (taken verbatim from my Edmodo site:)
“The real test of whether you are successful at writing may be based less on what you actually churned out from our assessment at the end of the 3rd quarter, but rather, your own sense of your success in meeting all the criteria.
So, this will be a better gauge of your understanding of how to think about historical documents, or how to think about causation, or how to do comparison and contrast, or how to set up a logical argument and follow it to its conclusion.
Step 1: What you will do is, consistent with our activities thus far, is critique 3 of the essays on this page: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/final-essay.html using our rubric (linked below)
I want you to find a mastery level essay, a target level essay, and a developing essay and write a thorough, lengthy critique that explains why each one deserves to be in that category. If you just circle the characteristics on the the rubric and give that to me in lieu of writing, that will be considered a zero. Do not choose your own for any of those categories (as you will see for Step 2)
This step is due on Monday in the form of a Tumblr blog post
For step 2 of this process, you will take another look at your essay and write a two page reflective paper that discusses the following prompts:
*what overall grade do you give yourself?
*which aspects of your paper do you feel hit mastery, target, or needs development?
*which aspects of your writing do you feel have improved over the course of the year?
*which aspects of your writing do you feel you still to work on, overall, for next year?
*which activities from this year were successful for you, which you were not, and what you suggest adding for next year?
Post this to Tumblr when you are done”
These critiques are located here: http://mpx9spring.weebly.com/blog1.html
F. Resolution
Do these activities show evidence of rigor and critical thought, but more importantly, do they resolve any of my burning questions?