Recognizing and Resolving Problems Connecting Students to Their World 6 Week Lesson Plan 8th Grade Helene Halstead ELAN 7408 Fall, 2006Rationale Teaching extends past the students you interact with each day. It stretches past the door of your decorated classroom and past the double doors of your concrete school building. What our students learn, or don’t learn, and how they apply it now, and for the rest of their lives, will shape our local communities and the world we will live in. It is essential, therefore, to provide students with the knowledge to notice current and potential problems, to instill the motivation to tackle the problems and the skills to develop workable solutions. Constructivist theorists maintain that students learn, or construct knowledge, through past experiences and beliefs as well as from those in which they come into contact. The teacher is merely the guide who leads the students to their own learning. A psychological constructivist is one who subscribes to Piaget’s theories that the child goes through a series of developmental stages (Abdal-Hagg, 1998). A child would not be guided through a learning opportunity until she or he was mature enough to make sense of that experience. At age 11 or 12, a child is developmentally able to make the transition from logical reasoning using concrete objects to abstract thinking about potential events. This theory thus indicates that teaching problem solving in relation to potential problems and problems which do not directly affect only the student would now be possible. If this had been attempted earlier in the child’s education, it would have been met with failure (Atherton, 2005). The student is, so to speak, ripe for the pickin’. Social constructivists use Vygotsky’s teachings and maintain that a child functions in relation to their social environment. According to social constructivists, children need context in which to learn; knowledge is gained through the child’s environment (Abdal, Hagg, 1998). School is possibly the second largest environment in which a child grows; the first would be family. Creating an atmosphere which encourages social change, motivation, problemsolving and action will give a child context for this type of behavior as they grow into adults. In fact, creating an atmosphere where learning happens in relationship to the world of the student provides a context for learning and is more meaningful than memorization tasks or non-authentic writing tasks. “Why do I have to learn this? I’ll never use it when I’m grown-up.” Even as a first year teacher, I have already learned to dread this plaintive cry. By the time a student is in the 8th grade, s/he has attended school for at least 8 full years. They have memorized how to diagram sentences, can point out various parts of speech, and can differentiate between a compound, complex and compound-complex sentence. At least, they have memorized this information for the school year. After a summer away from learning, these facts, unconnected to a student’s schema, must be re-taught each year until they either become part of the student’s adult career or are forgotten forever. Is this because students do not need to learn correct grammar and punctuation? Obviously not. But what becomes important to these individuals once they are no longer students is the world around them. Their jobs. Their family. Themselves. And as young adults, this is also what is important to our learners: their friends, their family and themselves. This scope has to be widened and school provides the structured atmosphere in which this should happen. Students should learn their standards in an atmosphere which encourages critical thinking and problem solving. Authentic tasks which open the doors to the world around them and their place in this world will give them tasks in which they can become involved and will remember their lessons for years to come. Can empathy be taught? Positions on this query vary, yet most agree that creating a culture where empathy is valued is essential to a child gaining this skill. Having adults around them who model this trait is a fundamental element to creating this culture; students can alsolearn how others with empathy behave. Using a variety of literary devices such as poetry, speech, narrative in addition to song and graphics this unit will demonstrate that thinking of the world in terms of identifying problems that can be solved is essential to the well-being of humanity. In fact, failure solve problems as they arise can lead to stagnation and have detrimental effects on society. Language Arts is the perfect subject to encourage communication regarding social change because it allows for personal exploration as well as ensuring students gain the skills stated in the Georgia Performance Standards. Specifically, in this lesson, students will examine different literary genres and using them to examine tone, mood, author purpose and figurative language. Students will use the texts to promote discussions and will compare/contrasts them with other texts they have read. Students will also write either a narrative or an expository essay and will proceed through draft and editing stages of writing. The unit starts with the examination of two marketing posters which almost all students have been exposed to, thus developing a schema for their understanding. They will read a poem, the subject of which is the question many students struggle with: why learn about authors who are dry and boring. Additionally, students will examine a speech meant to motivate by Martin Luther King, Jr., Redemption Song by Bob Marley and the book Feed by M.T. Anderson. Feed is a book that can be enjoyed by almost all students, both male and female. It is set in the future and incorporates young adults’ lives with technology, flying, shopping, and relationships. It also involves political problems, relationship problems and problems with personal choice. So often students complain about boring text; this text promises to skirt this common complaint. Because this lesson will be taught in a rural community,