Lesson Plan 2
Focus/Context
Although the focus of Thematic Literature 3201 has an emphasis on literary
texts, it also requires students to apply a wide variety of forms to various
communication situations. One of
the three main constituents of this unit is based on family relationships.
At the end of this lesson, students will be able to effectively
articulate their feelings about family relationships on a personal level.
Specific Curriculum Outcomes
Speaking and Listening
- Students
will examine others’ ideas and synthesize what is helpful to clarify and
extend their own understanding.
- Students
will ask discriminating questions to acquire, interpret, analyze and
evaluate ideas and information.
- Students
will demonstrate active listening and concern for the needs, rights and
feelings of others.
Reading and Viewing
- Students
will articulate their own processes and strategies in exploring,
interpreting and reflecting on sophisticated texts and tasks.
- Students
will access, select and research, in systematic ways, specific information
to meet personal and learning needs and evaluate their research process.
Writing and Other Ways of Representing
- Students
will use writing and other ways of representing to extend, explore and
reflect on (i) the process and strategies they used.
- Students
will use note-making strategies to reconstruct complex knowledge.
- Students
will use technology to effectively serve their communication purposes.
- Students
will integrate information from many sources to construct and communicate
meaning.
Activities
- Following
the Ten Rules of Fieldwork outlined in a handout from Bruce
Jackson’s book Fieldwork, students will conduct various interviews
with close family members and record these interviews on tape.
The purpose of these interviews will be to collect meaningful
information about the student’s family history.
- Students
will compile relevant information in jot note form, using their taped
interviews, and construct a rough outline of their family trees.
- Students
will be given two classes in the computer lab to make use of My Family
Tree (a user-friendly family tree construction program) to build their
own visual representations of their heritage.
- Students
will compose an expository essay for their journals focusing on the task of
researching for and creating a family tree.
Assessment
- Specific
criteria will be agreed upon for the assessment of the interviews as well as
the construction of the family tree, and students will be evaluated against
this criteria upon completion of their final copies.
- Special
Attention will be paid to the methods and techniques used during the
interviews – adherence to the Ten Rules of Fieldwork will be taken
into account, and the quality of information will also be assessed (is there
any context to the interview, or is it simply a mechanical question-answer
type of interview?).
- The
expository essays will be assessed by way of an analytic rubric which will
focus on (i)content; (ii)organization; (iii)sentence fluency; (iv)voice; (v)word
choice; (vi)conventions. Each
of these categories will be assessed on a scale of 1-5 (poor-exemplary).
A copy of this rubric will be circulated at the beginning of the year
and posted at the front of the classroom for reference.
Resources
The Ten Rules of Fieldwork (Fieldwork
by Bruce Jackson)
My Family Tree
(Interactive Software Package)
Personal Interviews (Conducted by
Students and recorded on tape)
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