Gathering Information from Multiple Perspectives

Intern: Nik Arnoldi

Date: Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013

Lesson/Activity Title: Gathering Information from Multiple Perspectives

Standards Addressed: Colorado Academic Standards: Reading Writing and Communicating – Oral Expression and Listening

Purpose: To equip students with the knowledge of how to best collect information from multiple rights-holders for our project on analyzing and treating a school-wide problem.

Learning Objectives: Students will learn and practice 7 strategies to collect information from multiple sources.

Materials: Notebooks/paper, pencil

Introduction: We will discuss the speaker we had the previous day and ask what are some interesting things they learned from her or about her. I will reference the discussion that we had the previous day with our speaker. From there, I will bring the conversation to the topic of interviewing someone with a different perspective on an issue. I will share the seven techniques one at a time, and ask for examples or clarification for each technique.

Activity/Procedures: After dividing into pre-decided groups, each group of students will choose one of the tips to demonstrate in a skit with their group. They will act out an example of a group using the tip successfully, as well as forgetting to use the tip and how that may pan out. I will give them ten minutes to get with their group and decide how they will plan to act out their skit. We will then reconvene and each group will be given five minutes or less to do their skit.

Closure: I will ask students to share why or how these techniques may help them in their process of interviewing these different sources. I will then share that these groups will be the groups that will work together in interviewing each of the rights holders in this school-wide problem.

Differentiation/Adaptation: 1. I will give the students a reminder of some of the different jobs in a group, such as note-taker, leader, timekeeper, and ask for other suggestions. I will explain that they can have combinations of these jobs based on their skills.

2. Students will be able to choose with their group which   tip they will demonstrate for the class.

Assessment: I will check to see if students understood the tips they were given by watching the skit that they performed. I will also read their interview questions that they provide in the extension to this project to see if they understood.

Extensions: 1. Students will use these interviewing skills to actually interview people in the school community to diagnose the school’s problem with the lunch program.