Topic Exploration
Questions of ethics have been discussed by humans for millennia. There seems to be few objective responses to these questions of morality, and morals are often very tied to time, place, culture, and other contexts. Strictly prescriptive approaches to questions of morality often do not hold water under scrutiny.
Key Questions
What do we mean when we say a person is good?
Can people be neatly separated into heroes/villains in real life?
Why do we root for certain characters/people and villainize others?
Activities
- Class discussion on Consequentialism vs Deontology with several variations on the classic “Trolley Problem”. Involves student movement, small-group discussions, and full-group debate.
- Ten quotes about morality are given. Students are to separate them into columns labeled “Agree”, “Disagree”, and “Unsure”. They are to choose two quotes, one which they strongly agree with and one which they strongly disagree with, and explain their position.
- Throughout the semester, when reading literature, students are consistently engaging with the essential questions
Culminating Activity
- Craft a character who you believe is the ultimate “good” person. What makes them good?
- Give this character a backstory. How did they get to be the way they are? Add other traits to fully flesh the character out
- Write a short story that shows off this character’s “goodness”. Have them overcome a difficult moral dilemma.
- Reflect: In what ways are you like this character? In what ways are you different? How can people be more like this character?
BC Learning Principles
Big Ideas: “Exploring stories and other texts helps us understand ourselves and make connections to others and to the world”; “People understand text differently depending on their worldviews and perspectives”; “Questioning what we hear, read, and view contributes to our ability to be educated and engaged citizens.”
Curricular Competencies: “Apply appropriate strategies to comprehend written, oral, and visual texts, guide inquiry, and extend thinking”; “Think critically, creatively, and reflectively to explore ideas within, between, and beyond texts”; “Recognize and identify the role of personal, social, and cultural contexts, values, and perspectives in texts”; “Construct meaningful personal connections between self, text, and world”; “Respond to text in personal, creative, and critical ways”; “Recognize and appreciate the role of story, narrative, and oral tradition in expressing First Peoples perspectives, values, beliefs, and points of view”; “Exchange ideas and viewpoints to build shared understanding and extend thinking”; “Use writing and design processes to plan, develop, and create engaging and meaningful literary and informational texts for a variety of purposes and audiences”; “Assess and refine texts to improve their clarity, effectiveness, and impact according to purpose, audience, and message”; “Use an increasing repertoire of conventions of Canadian spelling, grammar, and punctuation”; “Transform ideas and information to create original texts.”
Content: “Story/text
- forms, functions, and genres of text
- text features
- literary elements
- literary devices
- elements of visual/graphic texts
- relevance, accuracy, reliability
Strategies and processes
- reading strategies
- oral language strategies
- metacognitive strategies
- writing processes
Language features, structures, and conventions
- features of oral language
- multi-paragraphing
- language usage and context
- elements of style
- syntax and sentence fluency
- conventions
- presentation techniques”
First People’s Principles: “Learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions”; “Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story”; “Learning requires exploration of one’s identity”
Inquiry
Inquiry is open-ended learning; as opposed to guiding students towards pre-ordained destinations of learning, teaching inquiry involves helping students expand their personal perspectives on the world. This project is intended to do just that: students are to clarify their own viewpoints on what makes a person morally good based on their personal experiences and values. In this process, they are taking part in discipline-based inquiry, as they will be critically analyzing texts and going through the process of writing a short work that promotes their personal worldview.
Resources
Williams, A. (2015). How to Incorporate Inquiry into an English Classroom. The Secondary English Coffee Shop. Retrieved from https://secondaryenglishcoffeeshop.blogspot.com/2017/02/how-to-incorporate-inquiry-into-english.htm
Williams emphasized two things I hadn’t yet considered in my project: different ways of expressing learning and full-class sharing. Beyond class discussions and written work, students should be given the opportunity to express themselves in other creative means, including new media. Additionally, the students should be given opportunities to learn from each other, possibly through full-class or small group sharing of a culminating activity or through sharing circles throughout the semester.
Inquiry-Based Learning. (2019). Literacy Today. Retrieved from https://www.literacytoday.ca/primary/talk/classroom-contexts/inquiry-based-learning/
This resource emphasized collaboration, which could be an interesting angle to pursue at some phase of my project. If students were put in a position in which they had to collaborate in exploring the questions posed by this inquiry, it could be interesting to see them make compromises in their moral views and craft collective responses to these queries
Kajder, S. (2005). Whole-Class Inquiry: Language Arts. Learning and Leading with technology. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ697386.pdf
Kajder makes a great distinction about the writing process in an inquiry classroom: the growth is in the process, not the final artifact. Too often, students are focused on the final product. It is the refining and clarifying of ideas that truly illuminate and clarify students’ insights to their own ways of thinking.
McTighe, J. & Wiggins, G. (2013). Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student Understanding, Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sfu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1164262.
An essential question is one that “awakens, heightens, or challenges thought”. I tried to use this definition as a framework for the essential questions that I want to consistently pop up throughout my inquiry. Adhering to the tenets of this resource, my questions were designed to be open-ended and of interest to those who work professionally as well as those who are just being introduced to the discipline.
Friesen, S. & Scott, D. (2013). Inquiry-Based Learning: A Review of the Research Literature. Retrieved from https://moodle.tru.ca/pluginfile.php/1366943/mod_resource/content/1/Friesen%20and%20Scott%20Review%20of%20Inquiry%20Lit.pdf
“Scaffolding activities, frequent opportunities for formative assessment, as well as powerful guiding questions are vitally important for ensuring inquiry-based projects to lead to deep understanding.” Frequent scaffolding, feedback, and refining are crucial to the inquiry cycle. My proposed project would have students engaged in this process as they revisit and refine their responses to the essential questions posed.
Van Kessel, C. (2019). The Grim Educator. University of Alberta Libraries. Retrieved from https://openeducationalberta.ca/grimeducator/
Van Kessel inspired me to integrate discussion of heroes and villains into my project. While this resource explores the topic as a critical lens for social studies, my English Language Arts class can explore this topic as it pertains to literature. Do the stories we read prime us to view the world through a dichotomous lens? How does this affect us?