Button Button
Everyday Ethics: the Finer Points of Ethical Decision Making in Button, Button by Richard Matheson
Lesson Design by Jordan Kuszak, Ali Larson, and Brett Sales
March 15th, 2012
Grade Level: 8
Time Frame: Four 50-minute Classes
Essential questions: 1) How can we use a text to get students to actively consider the weight of the decisions they make? 2) How will students’ analysis of the ethically charged decisions of characters in a text spur a critical consideration of the decision-making process at work in their own lives and how can this interaction most effectively be expressed in an original way? 3) What is the benefit of teaching grammar in the context of a free-form creative piece of writing?
Rationale:
One of our goals as educators is to help our students come to a better understanding of how to use the English language. Instrumental in this is leading students to actively engage in literary analysis and thoughtful composition. Our job as educators extends far beyond literary analysis and composition in the classroom, however. We have to make every effort to ensure that what we’re teaching in some way connects to students’ interaction with the wider world. In the context of this particular lesson, we will be using literary analysis of Button, Button, by Richard Matheson, to give students a space in which to think critically, creatively, and ethically about their own experiences with ethical decision making in the world and then communicate those experiences in their own writing.
Because students in middle school are soon going to be entering a phase in their lives where an empathetic understanding of the world will require the fair consideration of multiple perspectives, the primary competency at work here will be ethical thinking. In regards to ethical thinking, Lipman says “education is not the extraction of a reasonable adult out of a reasonable child, but a development of the child’s impulses to be reasonable” (Lipman 263).
Lesson Design by Jordan Kuszak, Ali Larson, and Brett Sales
March 15th, 2012
Grade Level: 8
Time Frame: Four 50-minute Classes
Essential questions: 1) How can we use a text to get students to actively consider the weight of the decisions they make? 2) How will students’ analysis of the ethically charged decisions of characters in a text spur a critical consideration of the decision-making process at work in their own lives and how can this interaction most effectively be expressed in an original way? 3) What is the benefit of teaching grammar in the context of a free-form creative piece of writing?
Rationale:
One of our goals as educators is to help our students come to a better understanding of how to use the English language. Instrumental in this is leading students to actively engage in literary analysis and thoughtful composition. Our job as educators extends far beyond literary analysis and composition in the classroom, however. We have to make every effort to ensure that what we’re teaching in some way connects to students’ interaction with the wider world. In the context of this particular lesson, we will be using literary analysis of Button, Button, by Richard Matheson, to give students a space in which to think critically, creatively, and ethically about their own experiences with ethical decision making in the world and then communicate those experiences in their own writing.
Because students in middle school are soon going to be entering a phase in their lives where an empathetic understanding of the world will require the fair consideration of multiple perspectives, the primary competency at work here will be ethical thinking. In regards to ethical thinking, Lipman says “education is not the extraction of a reasonable adult out of a reasonable child, but a development of the child’s impulses to be reasonable” (Lipman 263).