The Design
Process:
1. Review the challenge: After a series of
history lessons on the issues listed above and the
Progressive Era, students will be told that their table
group will now form their own society. They must develop
their own laws (manifesto) on the issues we’ ve been
studying, a name for their society, a flag, and ultimately
a kind of advertisement highlighting the benefits of their
society and intending to attract others to move there. They
also must complete a diagram or a model of what their
society/town will look like.
2. Students will begin by
reviewing their history notes and making a list of all the
issues they will need to decide upon and address in their
manifesto. (Important note: students will not be allowed to
form a “ utopia” . They will not be able to
magically fix all problems - instead they must debate
and rank the issues in terms of importance to their
society, and all solutions must be historically plausible.
)
3. Groups are given the Society Project Planning
Sheet while we go over the steps of the assignment.
(Note:
The first part of the design process will mostly be focused
on the issues leading to their manifesto, i. e. application
of historical content. )
4. Investigate: After
receiving their assignment, students will be guided through
a deeper discovery process in order to gather information
on their top four selected issues. Resources will include
classroom texts, textbooks, articles and Web sites. Teacher
will model in the beginning and will provide a worksheet
(Society Project Organizer) to help students find what
would be most important in understanding the issue as a
whole.
5. With the new focus of forming their own
societies, students will ask themselves a series of
questions (ex: What do we do about immigration? What do we
do about child labor vs. the cost of skilled laborers? Etc.
).
6. Frame the Problem: After the allotted time for
research, students will hold a discussion with their group
around the questions:
Did we correctly identify the
top four issues that we would like to address in our
society?
- How has our researched added to our
understanding?
- What do we still need to know?
-
What types of ideals are immerging as representative to our
society (ex: peace, freedom of expression, equal
rights)?
(Note: At this point, student groups will
begin to brainstorm both their solutions to their chosen
issues and their representative ideals of their society
{name, images, etc. }. )
7. Generate Possible
Solutions: Students will brainstorm possible solutions to
the challenge by discussing ways they could solve the
issues in their society. We refer to these solutions as
resolutions. At first, no idea is too crazy, even though
one of the design constraints is to keep it historically
plausible. (Note: This generation of ideas will begin in
class and then be a homework assignment, which will be
discussed and shared the next day. ) Brainstorm can take
the form of a list, a drawing, diagram, or a written
narrative. Quantity will be emphasized. Students will also
brainstorm names for the society based on the immerging
ideals they are trying to establish in their manifesto.
8.
Editing and Developing Idea: Teacher will help the students
to narrow down their ideas by reminding them of the
constraints (no utopian societies, historically plausible).
This will be done by using one group’ s Society
Project as a model and posing questions to troubleshoot and
determine its historical plausibility.
9. After
interviewing the example group, students will then meet in
their own groups and make final decisions on their
manifesto. By now they should have finished their research
and be ready to move on to designing the name, flag, layout
of the town and advertisement. Students will choose two to
three different ideas to develop though writing, sketching,
diagramming, or modeling.
10. Sharing and Evaluating:
Students will be partnered with another group to briefly
share their ideas about their flag, name, layout and
advertisement. Teacher will model this briefly and provide
specific guiding questions for groups to ask each other.
The goals are to provide excellent feedback, to be
receptive to peer’ s comments, and to utilize the
best of those comments to improve their work.
11. Finalize:
Students make a final decision on their society’ s
name.
12. Then, they will choose one theme to focus on and
develop that idea further. At this point they will decide
who among the group will take on the following tasks:
sketching the town layout or building the town as a model,
writing the manifesto which addresses all the issues and
solutions, constructing the flag, and completing the
advertisement (this can take on many forms). One of these
tasks may have two people working on it.
(Note: The last
step should be a few days later so that students have time
to work on their presentations and finalize their
individual parts of the project. )
13.
Articulate: As a final step, students turn in a complete
society project with all the components listed above.
Societies will present their ideas to the class and the
class will help the teacher determine which societies best
met the challenge.