Project Overview
This project is aimed at eighth grade students learning the BC curriculum. The students will work towards clarifying and articulating their unique moral viewpoints while exploring oral and written storytelling techniques, culminating in the creation of a short story that articulates their own moral philosophies.
Friesen’s 5 Principles
“Effective teaching practice begins with the thoughtful and intentional design of learning that engages students intellectually and academically.”
Students are challenged to critically analyze and articulate their own views about the world around them. The ability to connect this project to their own context and craft stories that they find interesting engages the learner. Throughout the unit, students are making connections between storytelling and the ability to articulate and express one’s worldview.
“The work that students are asked to undertake is worthy of their time and attention, is personally relevant, and deeply connected to the world in which they live”
Throughout the unit, the students are asked to further clarify and articulate their own worldviews and discuss the real-world implications of these worldviews. There is an emphasis on individual “knowledge creation and elaborated communication” (Friesen & Scott 2013)
“Assessment practices are clearly focused on improving student learning and guiding teaching decisions and actions”
Opportunities for formative assessment, peer assessment, and self-reflection pervade this unit, giving students the opportunity to grow. Additionally, students play an active role in the crafting of assignment criteria, which clarifies expectations and creates a deeper connection tot he content (Friesen 2015).
“Teachers foster a variety of interdependent relationships in classrooms that promote learning and create a strong culture around learning.”
Students are frequently given the opportunity for discussion, debate, and collaboration as well as peer feedback, cultivating a culture of communal learning. The discussion among students is a crucial part of this inquiry, and cultivating an environment that is conducive to valuable and open discussion and flexible enough to let that discussion become a prominent feature of class time if need be are important roles of the teacher here (Clifford and Friesen 2003)
“Teachers improve their practice in the company of peers.”
Teachers may collaborate between disciplines; connections between moral philosophy can easily be made with others who teach Social Studies or Science, just to give two of the more obvious examples.
Rationale: Students at this age are rapidly growing into citizens who can have a great impact on the world. This unit can help them be more mindful of how they affect the people and environment around them. At no point should the teacher prescribe any moral beliefs, but rather they should facilitate the students mindful clarification and articulation of their beliefs. Storytelling can be a wonderful vehicle for this. To these ends, students can be guided towards the history of storytelling as not just a means of entertainment, but rather a way of communicating ideas to others in an engaging and memorable way. Storytelling, thus, is not merely a fun yet ultimately frivolous skill, but rather it is both a great introspective practice in clarifying one’s own worldview and an effective way to communicate ideas to others.
Essential Questions:
What makes a person/character morally good?
What impact can storytelling have on the world?
Why do we root for some people/characters and not others?
Inquiry Approach
This undertaking has many elements of a discipline-based inquiry. “Educators advocating for this approach argue that each discipline (e.g., science, mathematics, history) has its own particular ways of generating knowledge, verifying what counts as quality work, and communicating. The job of teachers thus becomes to apprentice young people into these practices” (Friesen 2015). Students are going through the writing process much in the way that an author would: they are clarifying the themes that they want to promote in their literature and making those come alive through the process of planning, organizing, drafting, editing, and crafting a final product. Throughout the process, there will be opportunities for peer and teacher feedback as well as self-reflection.
BC Curriculum Learning Principles
Big Ideas
“Questioning what we hear, read, and view contributes to our ability to be educated and engaged citizens.”
“Language and text can be a source of creativity and joy.”
“Exploring stories and other texts helps us understand ourselves and make connections to others and to the world.”
Competencies
“Recognize and appreciate the role of story, narrative, and oral tradition in expressing First Peoples perspectives, values, beliefs, and points of view”: Students are crafting a story that expresses their personal perspectives
“Exchange ideas and viewpoints to build shared understanding and extend thinking”: Students are sharing and expressing ideas about moral goodness in order to expand each others’ mindsets
“Use writing and design processes to plan, develop, and create engaging and meaningful literary and informational texts for a variety of purposes and audiences”: Students arecrafting a story that expresses their personal perspectives to their peers
“Assess and refine texts to improve their clarity, effectiveness, and impact according to purpose, audience, and message”: Students will go through the writer’s process of planning, drafting, and revising
“Use an increasing repertoire of conventions of Canadian spelling, grammar, and punctuation”: Students will be instructed and evaluated on spelling, grammar, and punctuation while the importance of these is emphasized
“Transform ideas and information to create original texts”: Students are transforming their ideas into a short narrative
Content
– forms, functions, and genres of text
– language usage and context
– elements of style
– syntax and sentence fluency
– presentation techniques
First People’s Principles
Overt connections will be made to the following First Peoples Principles of Learning (n.d.): “Learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions”; “Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story”; “Learning requires exploration of one’s identity”
Assessment Principles
Formative assessment will occur frequently, as the teacher will give feedback on scaffolding activities and drafts. Peer feedback will occur as students engage in the writing and editing process. Additionally, students will be asked to self-assess with justification. Three final products will be marked with rubrics that the students will help craft: The written fable, the oral story, and the short story.
Learning Activities (Lesson Plans and other resources included below titles)
Moral Dilemmas (2 classes)
Students are introduced to the unit and the final activity (writing a short story that espouses one’s moral beliefs) is introduced. Students are asked to brainstorm qualities that they believe make a character morally good. Next, they will be asked to make a list collectively with peers, leading to a class discussion on why some people’s lists may differ. Students are challenged with difficult moral dilemma thought experiments, and reminded that these are the types of dilemmas that often come up in fiction. As a culminating activity, students are asked to choose from a list of moral dilemmas and write a brief in-character response to the scenario that reflects their unique point of view.
Themes and Fables (2 classes)
http://www.taleswithmorals.com/
Students are introduced to classic fables with an example and a discussion of what purpose they might serve. This is to act as an introduction to the concept of theme in literature, as students are to reflect on what worldview is being imparted in the stories they are reading; as fables are simple stories whose purpose is to put forth a single message, they are an apt introduction to this concept. Students are to collectively come up with the common elements of fables and read three fables of their choosing from a list, writing about how they use these elements. Then, students are tasked with choosing their own lesson to impart and writing a simple fable towards those ends, following the elements of the genre.
Oral Storytelling (5 classes)
(Wesley 2015)
The teacher will lead students in a discussion regarding the history of oral storytelling and its importance to non-literate societies, as well as its importance in modern times and to literate societies. Overt connections will be made to the history of oral storytelling in First Nations; an example article is included that outlines the convergence of science and First Nations storytelling as researchers piece together the history of our land and its people, and a Youtube video of a First Nations oral story will be shown (or, if possible, a visit from a First Nations storyteller), followed by a discussion regarding the reason people may have wanted to pass on this story (Wesley, 2015).
The class will have an open discussion regarding the elements of a good story, leading to a version of the classical story structure. They will also discuss elements of good storytelling, such as volume and pace. Students will take turns doing some brief storytelling in groups and then in front of the class to receive feedback.
Students will then be instructed to craft a 2-3 minute story. This is open-ended: it could be a personal story, a fiction they craft, or a retelling of a story they have heard. The main criteria is that they follow the classic story structure and the elements of storytelling that have been discussed in class. Again, students will practice and receive feedback in small groups before ultimately presenting in front of the class. The students will be marked on a rubric that they have helped craft.
Critical Quotation Analysis (1 class)
Critical Quotation Analysis Lesson Plan
The students are presented with a list of quotes from books, films, and famous figures that reflect the speakers’ moral philosophies; the quotes are curated to be particularly challenging to choose whether to agree with. Students are to cut out the quotes and separate them on to a large piece of paper in columns marked Agree, Disagree, and Unsure. In a reflective activity, the students are to choose 2 quotes they agree with, 2 they disagree with, and one which they most struggled with and explain why they chose to put it where it was. They are to craft a quote that reflects their own moral philosophy.
Short Story Writing (10 classes)
Students are asked to write a story that expresses and promotes their views on what makes a person morally good. This is to follow the classic story structure we have discussed in previous lessons, and the conflict must be a challenging moral dilemma that the protagonist must overcome. The story will be slowly developed over time as students choose their genre, describe their settings and characters, and map out their plot with feedback from the teacher. Once the students have created a draft, they will each peer edit two other stories. Students’ final drafts will be marked regarding espousing of a clear theme, adherence to structure, identifiable story elements, and spelling/grammar.
Inclusive Practices
Throughout the process, subjectivity will be emphasized. One of the goals of this project is to impart the diversity of different worldviews and the role our personal contexts play in shaping those. Students of all different backgrounds are invited to reflect on their own worldviews and find new ways to express those to the world. Students of all different skill level can partake in this activity; while some will have more skill in writing and speaking than others, all can learn to further hone these techniques and improve their abilities to assert their own worldviews. It is very important that, early on in the school year, a culture of acceptance and productive conversation is established in the classroom.
First Nations Perspectives
The oral storytelling activity makes connections to the First Nations tradition of oral storytelling. First Peoples’ stories are used as examples, and ideally, a member of the local First Nations community would be able to come into the classroom to discuss storytelling in their culture. Additionally, connections will be made between First Peoples’ oral stories and recent scientific and historical discoveries about Canada, underscoring the practical value in this rich history of storytelling (Mortillaro 2016; Nicholas 2016). This project also adheres to many of the First People’s Principles of Learning (n.d.), especially the declaration that “learning is embedded in memory, history, and story” and “learning requires exploration of one’s identity.”
25 Moral Dilemmas. (2013). Pixi’s Blog. Retrieved from http://psychopixi.com/uncategorized/25-moral-dilemmas.
Aesop’s Fables. (n.d.). taleswithmorals.com
BC’s New Curriculum. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/
First Peoples Principle of Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://moodle.tru.ca/pluginfile.php/1367014/mod_resource/content/1/First%20People%20Principles%20of%20Learning.pdf
Friesen, S. (2015). Focus on Inquiry. Galileo Educational Network.
Friesen, S. & Scott, D. (2013). Inquiry-Based Learning: A Review of the Research Literature. Alberta Ministry of Education.
Jardine, D., Clifford, P., and Friesen, S. (2003). Back to the Basics of Teaching and Learning: Thinking the World Together. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
McTighe, J. & Wiggins, G. (2013). Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student Understanding. ProQuest ebook.
Mortillaro, N. (2016). How science and First Nations oral tradition are converging. CBC News. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/science-first-nations-oral-tradition-converging-1.3853799
Nicholas, G. (2018). It’s taken thousands of years, but Western science is finally catching up to Traditional Knowledge. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/its-taken-thousands-of-years-but-western-science-is-finally-catching-up-to-traditional-knowledge-90291
Shalhub, S. (2013). Stop Calling me a “Female” Surgeon. Op-Med. Retrieved from https://opmed.doximity.com/articles/stop-calling-me-a-female-surgeon?_csrf_attempted=yes
The Trolley Problem. (n.d.). Alyssa’s HAS233 Site. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/has233aw/the-trolley-problem.
Wesley, S. (2015). Cree Creation Story. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn0zJ1QH2Zc