Lesson Plan Reflection

I tried to incorporate throughout the lesson the varying aspects of things discussed in class--best practices, teaching around the wheel, Cohen's Groupwork, The Art of Inquiry, national standards, and the EALRs.  They are elucidated and clarified below.
 
 

National Standards

(From the National Council of Teachers of English)

7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and non-print texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.

8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.

In today's technology-driven society, it is imperative for students to be able to not only navigate information sources, but to know whether the data they are seeking is authentic or believable.  They need to know about the agendas that drive different websites and media sources.  Because the Internet is a largely untamed frontier of free speech, issues of censorship are highly relevant--a lack of censorship means that hate speech, pseudoscience, urban legends and outright fraud are prevalent.  Students need to know how to sift and sort, to find the useful material among the dreck.

EALRs

Reading 1.5.1 (Electronic Media)

Objectives

Through researching, analyzing and critiquing Internet sources related to censorship, students will be able to critically analyze the validity of electronic information.

Best Practices: (183-216)

The unit includes several "best practices."

Group investigations: students are part of research teams, and are responsible to create a group presentation concurrently with individual annotations.
Representing-to-learn: students use semantic webbing, research logs (kept on disk), posters, drama, or speeches to demonstrate what they have learned through research
Authentic experiences: students will listen to / interview / question community speakers.  They will study news and current events.  The substance of their inquiry will be generated by real community controversy.
 

Teaching Around the Wheel
 

concrete experience the disequilibrating activity (experiencing book-banning first-hand)	reflective observation Art of Inquiry's "I-search"; students generate questions and directions for research
active experimentation taking concept of critical reading and applying to new context of magazines, TV shows, books, etc.	abstract conceptualization minilessons / instruction on critically reading websites

The unit begins with a disequilibrating activity in the realm of concrete experience, as students undergo book-banning first-hand.  Their next task is to make sense of it, to come up with reasons and categories of censorship, to begin the research process, thus moving into reflective observation.  The teacher can then introduce abstract concepts through minilessons on critical reading and logic, as students learn ways of determining the trustworthiness of websites.  They can then take these newfound concepts and apply them in new situations, thus completing the circle.

The Group Process

Making sure research moves forward (after Cohen, "The Group Investigative Method," in Designing Groupwork")

The group research process is suitable for higher-order thinking (analysis, synthesis, evaluation).

According to Cohen, initial topic-generating groups should be different from research groups; students should join research groups based in interests. 2-5 students per group.

Aspects:

1. Groups study different aspects of the same topic
2. Groups prepare a presentation for the class

Cohen notes that all students may not be suited for groupwork—or for each other. Thus, the teacher's role is to "…work as an intellectual leader and resource person, assisting the groups to develop the more challenging questions and learning tasks, helping the groups with the resources and skills they will need to carry out their tasks, worrying about coordination of different group projects, and paying close attention to what will be the overall intellectual integration of the curriculum unit" (90).

The I-Search

The I-search is a way to organize research; it is found in  The Art of Inquiry… (97-100).  Students research their own particular question, and take notes that are readily transferable into another context--and include source information to organize a bibliography.  As the name of the strategy implies, real research is generated by personal interests and questions.  The strategy is also designed to be used by teams, so it was easily adapted to the Cohen research team strategy.
 

About Special Needs / ESL

Students with limited proficiency in English can be directed to websites in their native language, and prepare annotations in that language and then translate (if they feel more comfortable doing so). They should be placed in groups with students who can help explain sites in English. The teacher may require fewer (but good-quality) annotations; the goal is quality of thinking, not quantity of output.

Students with IEPs must be accommodated according to the provisions of the IEP. This may mean providing more time to finish the project, reading webpage content aloud (or using voice software), providing large-print materials, hard copy of directions and group products (printed out after each session).