Navigating The Lesson Plan

Helpful visual when thinking about how a lesson plan will engage critical thinking in students:

Example Lesson Plan

Theme/big idea: Community, interconnectedness

Goal:

• For my classroom to learn about each other and see beyond stereotypes or biases

• To exercise acting like a community and thinking about each other as a community

• To understand how interconnected they are and explore how their actions can effect one another.

The Steps:

• I'd begin the lesson by giving each kid a printout to draw on. It would have comic book frames dividing the page into 4 horizontal rectangles.

• I would give them markers or colored pencils and tell them they are going to be timed and will have to eventually pass on the piece of paper and let other people draw on their work, so I'd set the expectation that whatever they draw they should focus on meeting the goal of the prompt and not making it the perfect picture. The time element should help keep them from working long and hard on a drawing and then getting upset if someone draws over it.

  
  

• After establishing that expectation I would tell them to draw something in 10 minutes they want or a goal they have in the bottom frame, something important to them. It doesn't have to be serious. I would give them examples to prompt brainstorming:

  Ex: Trying all the cupcakes at a favorite bakery

  Ex: Learning a new language or skill

  Ex: Becoming a veterinarian

  
  

• Then they would have 5 minutes each to draw an obstetrical or barriers they may have to overcome to get what they want in each of the other three boxes. I would give them examples to prompt brainstorming:

  Ex: swarm of bees

  Ex: snowstorm

  Ex: studying for a test

  Ex: not being old enough to have a drivers license to get there

  
  

• Then I'd (also timed, 5 minutes each) have the kids pass the papers around clockwise 3 times. When a student would receive anthers paper, they would be tasked with drawing something to help their friend out. (If they're not sure what their friends drawing is of they can ask for clarification). I would give them examples to prompt brainstorming:

  Ex: an umbrella or shovel to get through rain

  Ex: flashcards or a library

  Ex: a beekeepers suit

  Ex: a map

  Ex: riding bikes together

Purpose: The lesson would prompt students to learn about the different interests and passions of their friends and be prompted to connect over them and work as a community and use their different strengths to help each other reach their goals. Through this art making process the kids would exercise getting to know each other beyond their looks in the way a self portrait would and would engage them in thinking about how they effect the story of each others lives. They would be actively engaged in seeing their interconnectedness and learn to appreciate how others may think differently than them and have unique solutions to problems they may not have thought of.

The final product: would be a comic each kid gets to take home visualizing themselves reaching a goal. Showing the journey to get there in the comic would make sure there's no understating how sometimes its challenging to reach a goal and mistakes have to be made as part of learning. Expecting and accepting mistakes would be part of the art process here, where the pressure to make the artwork perfect would be taken off the kids by saying no one is expected to make anything perfect under the time constraint.

The added element to build off of this lesson would involve string but it would depend on wall space and time. Depending on time it may have to be another days lesson to build off of the original one.

I would shuffle the papers and hang them on the wall. Then I would let the kids choose colorful strings and have them tac one end to their comic and the other to comics they helped out on.

The end result: would be a classroom wall decoration, a collaborative web connecting the kids passions goals and interests together by visualizing all the ways they can support each other as they grow and learn together.