Global+Awareness+Lesson+Plan

=Global Awareness Lesson Plan=

The purpose of the assignment was to get the students targeted in the class to think beyond themselves. As students get older they become more aware of their surroundings and the world in general. This assignment allows them to research ideas and topics which impact them on a personal level, but also relevant to the world around them. Beyond the global reach of this assignment, students need to start tapping into the technology they have available to them for more than just playing games. Today, the internet brings the entire world into the computer on their desk. Beside information and articles available through general search engines, most schools have subscribed to academic databases like EBSCO and GALE. With this wealth of information, students need to use logic and reasoning to decide which information is valid and relevant.

**Process**
The purpose of the lesson is to develop research skills. The general topic of social problems makes the research relevant and hopefully interesting to the student, but the process develops the foundation for most papers the students will have to write in their academic future. This process is glossed over in too many classes because so much emphasis is placed on the final product which is usually a paper. This lesson actually removes the final paper from the process so that the early stages of research become the point of the exercise. This lesson breaks the research process down into the following sections: choosing a topic, finding valid resources, selecting relevant quotes and facts, and organizing research into a logical order. So often these parts are confined into a very tight schedule with a definite deadline. Deadlines are important because in the real world, most writing is done as an interim step toward a final product. As an early project in the research process, this lesson only gets better if it is stretched out over a longer time period so that each section can be broken down and practiced before moving on to the next step.

Reflection
Almost everything done in an English/language arts class is done to make the students better writers. We do vocabulary and grammar to make students better readers, and the better we are at reading the better we will become at writing. There are many other benefits to literature, but the point of it all is to help our students become better communicators. During my student teaching, my primary responsibility was directing my students through their junior year research paper. I was frequently shock by what caused my students to fail. Many did not realize that picking a topic completely foreign to them would require additional background research. Many had problems defining their topic because of this. Many spent hours collecting quotes which were completely irrelevant to their topics. They went through the motions of research without paying attention to what they were actually reading and writing. No wonder they had trouble writing the paper. My favorite part of this lesson I have stolen from the librarian, Bob Wilk, who supervised my first practicum. Students, in general, are afraid of writing. Everybody remembers their worst case of writers block, but few have experienced the opposite - ideas coming so fast you can't keep up. When a student hears five to seven pages, their first thought is what if I can only write three. By eliminating the actual paper from this assignment and giving students a free hand on how they will present their research, most of the anxiety is removed from the assignment.