Lesson Analysis
Overall, I feel that the lesson was a success, in spite of some potentially formidable management challenges (I wasn’t exactly teaching in ideal circumstances: we were working in the hallway, on the day before Thanksgiving, with students who didn’t all pick Social Studies as their first choice lesson, while the rest of the class was getting ready to play games). This chiefly affected student behavior – students were frequently distracted and often not listening carefully to one another, particularly at the beginning. At one point towards the beginning, I considered ending the lesson early and trying again at a later date; however, I stuck with it because, though students were distracted, they did seem interested in the topic, and I anticipated that, once the lesson permitted them to move about and collaborate, engagement would greatly increase. I am entirely glad that I stuck with it – sure enough, students became more engaged with each subsequent portion of the lesson, and by the time they were standing up and placing the sticky notes on the wall, they were quite actively participating and responding to the lesson.
As anticipated, the initial brainstorming around fairness reflected a fairly simplistic view: asked what it meant for something to be “fair,” the students generated the words “sharing,” “equal,” “caring,” and “similar.” The activity in which students distributed marbles initially ended with an even distribution where each student received two marbles. When I asked them to include me in their redistribution, the results were fascinating: the students became noticeably uncomfortable with the idea that they could not reach a perfectly equal distribution. The students passed marbles to one another, and to me, and finally we reached a point where I had two marbles, three of the students had two marbles each, and the fourth student kept her fist closed but insisted that she had two marbles in it as well. In other words, she sacrificed her own portion in order to give the impression of equality (of course, it was a minimal sacrifice since she didn’t get to keep the marbles; it may have been a more valuable activity if we had used an item that they could actually keep, so that fairness would seem more important). We had a brief discussion about what had happened – frankly, though, because of the distraction issues mentioned above, I moved fairly quickly through this, which I regret; it would have been interesting and potentially valuable to ask that one student why she made the choice she did, and ask the other students to respond to it, using this as a springboard to deeper discussion of how you can be fair when you don’t have enough to give everyone the same. With the final portion of the whole-group section – where I offered pencils to everyone who didn’t have them – students quickly jumped on the idea that this was still fair because everyone who had “need” (their word) of a pencil got one. I made sure to write the words “need” and “want” on the board; in retrospect I wish I had written more things they had discussed on the board prior to this point.
During the pair section, students were engaged and collaborative. Below are a few clips I managed to record; I was impressed by how seriously they were taking the task and the responsibility to work together, especially given the lack of opportunities for collaboration that they have otherwise had in the classroom this year.
As anticipated, the initial brainstorming around fairness reflected a fairly simplistic view: asked what it meant for something to be “fair,” the students generated the words “sharing,” “equal,” “caring,” and “similar.” The activity in which students distributed marbles initially ended with an even distribution where each student received two marbles. When I asked them to include me in their redistribution, the results were fascinating: the students became noticeably uncomfortable with the idea that they could not reach a perfectly equal distribution. The students passed marbles to one another, and to me, and finally we reached a point where I had two marbles, three of the students had two marbles each, and the fourth student kept her fist closed but insisted that she had two marbles in it as well. In other words, she sacrificed her own portion in order to give the impression of equality (of course, it was a minimal sacrifice since she didn’t get to keep the marbles; it may have been a more valuable activity if we had used an item that they could actually keep, so that fairness would seem more important). We had a brief discussion about what had happened – frankly, though, because of the distraction issues mentioned above, I moved fairly quickly through this, which I regret; it would have been interesting and potentially valuable to ask that one student why she made the choice she did, and ask the other students to respond to it, using this as a springboard to deeper discussion of how you can be fair when you don’t have enough to give everyone the same. With the final portion of the whole-group section – where I offered pencils to everyone who didn’t have them – students quickly jumped on the idea that this was still fair because everyone who had “need” (their word) of a pencil got one. I made sure to write the words “need” and “want” on the board; in retrospect I wish I had written more things they had discussed on the board prior to this point.
During the pair section, students were engaged and collaborative. Below are a few clips I managed to record; I was impressed by how seriously they were taking the task and the responsibility to work together, especially given the lack of opportunities for collaboration that they have otherwise had in the classroom this year.
Both pairs of students initially clustered their responses into three clumps – one at the top, one at the bottom, and one in the middle. Wanting them to put more thought into comparing the various options, I added an extra challenge: students could place no more than two sticky notes directly next to each other. Students at first seemed shocked, but quickly stepped up to the task and now began to compare each sticky note to the whole spectrum rather than simply choosing a category to place it in. When it came time to look at each other’s lists, students were genuinely shocked at the ways that the other partners had ranked the scenarios; I quickly encouraged them not to respond to the other pair, but to talk to each other about why they disagreed.
The student rankings:
Before bringing the students together to discuss their results, I made note of a few where the students had the strongest disagreements, as well as a couple points of agreement. I began with one where the students had all agreed (#2, Mr. G. gives cake to everyone who says they’re hungry), and asked a student from each pair to explain why they thought that was fair. From there, I moved to what I found to be the two most intriguing disparities (#4, Mr. G. sells the cake; and #8, Mr. G. gives crumbs to the whole school). With the first one, one pair argued that it was unfair because not everyone might have money; the other pair argued that, if I told them in advance, then everybody could have brought money. I was (you might guess) very excited by this, and tried to revoice their arguments: the first students were arguing that it was an issue of access, where some students couldn’t get cake even if they wanted to; while the other students were arguing that it was a case of maintaining the same rules for everyone. I agreed that both of these could be seen as different ways of looking at fairness, and wrote both dimensions of equity on the board. With the other one we discussed (the crumbs), I likewise got a distinction that I couldn’t have planned better myself: one pair argued that it was fair, because everyone got the same, while the other pair argued that it wasn’t fair because nobody would want a crumb. I revoiced these as one argument rooted in determining the recipients (I labeled this “Who?”), while the other argument was concerned with the item’s value to the people receiving it.
At this point, it would have been ideal to return to the original question and ask students to write an answer to the question “what is fairness?” However, there were only about 10 minutes remaining for students to return to the classroom for games, so I decided to let them go. Nevertheless, even without this final assessment, I feel strongly that the students demonstrated progress on the objectives for this lesson. Not only did they effectively collaborate and articulate their opinions, but they also by the end were discussing much more complex concepts of fairness than those which they had initially brainstormed.
At this point, it would have been ideal to return to the original question and ask students to write an answer to the question “what is fairness?” However, there were only about 10 minutes remaining for students to return to the classroom for games, so I decided to let them go. Nevertheless, even without this final assessment, I feel strongly that the students demonstrated progress on the objectives for this lesson. Not only did they effectively collaborate and articulate their opinions, but they also by the end were discussing much more complex concepts of fairness than those which they had initially brainstormed.