Lesson Plan
- Discipline: Natural and Social Sciences
- Level: 4th grade
- Date: 06/20/21
- Duration of the lesson: 60 minutes
- Location: Classroom (this is the central part) and house (this is for gathering information)
Very brief description
The key leitmotif for the entire activity should be recognition of the critical importance of education in school. Pupils independently collect family data on their relative’s education level and occupation. Subsequently, data from all students is collected and coded, and then the entire class creates an overall picture of the relationship between the individual’s education and the workplace.
Educational Goals
- Collect, record, and analyze qualitative information through interviewing relatives.
- Expansion of personal responsibility for contributing to the collective class.
- Ability to analyze information, making judgments based on causal and simple correlational relationships.
New vocabulary terms
- Interviewing is a questionnaire, a survey.
- The conclusion is a statement made on the basis of collected data.
- Research is conducting an experiment.
- Correlation is a correlation, finding a relationship between variables.
Required materials
Report forms to fill out (according to the number of children in the class), shared table, and whiteboard.
Reflection questions
- Was it difficult to interview relatives?
- What were the main difficulties in interviewing?
- Which relatives were more willing to talk about their education? Why do you think so?
- Why did we mix answers and anonymize them?
- Why do we need to create inferences when analyzing the data?
- Can we always draw accurate conclusions when using a set of two variables as data?
Control Method
Each student must individually draw their own conclusions based on the data being analyzed and then provide the teacher with a report card: a summative assessment. Formative assessment is implemented through an examination of the student’s engagement in the educational process and responses to the posed reflection questions.
Summary
The lesson plan being developed is designed to develop junior high school students’ research skills in gathering and analyzing information from their environment. Thus, the directed action of the lesson extends beyond the classroom and uses a real-world social agenda. The teacher gives each student an individual paper report, which is a table:
The student completes the table on their own at the house, using their relatives as a data source. The child also chooses the number of people who are interviewed. The survey method is a simple interview in which the student asks two questions about (i) the place of employment and (ii) the level of education. Then, this data is brought to the teacher, who collects it from the entire class. Next, the tables are anonymized and shuffled, and then given to the class in the form of cards on which the level of education and place of employment are written: prepared by the teacher beforehand. The class uses mathematical skills to sort the set of all the cards into categories: secondary education, higher education, and no education. Each student, using their own report card, should then record their observations and draw final conclusions about the relationship between educational attainment and individuals’ employment. Suggested wording might be as follows:
- “In the category of people without education, jobs tend to be easier.”
- “Those without education tended to be employed in physical labor.”
- “No pattern was found between the level of education and work.”
Plan Analysis
It is critical for today’s elementary school students to pre-create a culture that encourages academic engagement. This includes students often questioning the need for education because it takes effort and time. To prevent destructive thoughts from developing, the teacher can take control of the situation in a timely manner (10 benefits, 2020). The proposed lesson plan is an effective solution that allows the student to come to a conclusion at an early age about the need for any education. Furthermore, the lesson is also aimed at the development of additional thoughts. Thus, a student from elementary school will be able to learn about a variety of jobs and will probably be able to find a field of work that he or she enjoys. In addition, the student will learn about levels of education better and understand the difference between high school and college education. These are secondary but also important vectors for the planned lesson.
The analysis of the lesson should further emphasize critical competencies and skills that are developed at such an early age. For example, the student implements the need for research from childhood through the collection of qualitative data from relatives. The simple interviewing method is the most intuitive yet effective solution for each student to complete a paper report. Additionally, the need to interview relatives will increase family involvement in the educational process, which is known to be an incredibly useful strategy for improving a student’s academic performance.
It is worth discussing the possible ethical issues that may be involved in the assignment. At first glance, it would seem that not all children may have relatives, which means that having to fill out paper reports may be unethical for such a child. In this case, the teacher probably knows the student’s individual situation beforehand and can therefore offer him or her an alternative option, namely to ask close adults, guardians, or caregivers. If no adults are available to the child, the teacher can help the student complete the report together. On the other hand, disclosing information such as education level and place of employment can be an unpleasant act for both relatives and children. In this case, the teacher gives the assurance that the data collected will be anonymized and the names will not be made public. Therefore, no student will know exactly which adult is uneducated or holds a critical corporate position. Thus, anonymous data collection and encryption are critical steps of the lesson.
Finally, when completing personal summaries, each student uses his or her own observations to come to conclusions. Thus, the likelihood of multiple conclusions is high: one student may discover connections that others do not and vice versa. More specifically, for some students, the connection between a high level of education and a prestigious — in their perception — job may be obvious, while for other students, an adult with no education may occupy the most exciting job. This means that the lesson tests not the correctness of the student’s judgment but the ability to draw conclusions from the available information as a whole. In addition, for the teacher, information about the children’s occupational preferences, too, can seem extremely interesting and allow for personalization of the learning process in the future. All of this combined allows for a holistic, well-rounded lesson that does not have a clear academic framework but instead encourages the creativity and autonomy of each student.
Reference
10 benefits showing why education is important to our society. (2020). Habitat for Humanity. Web.