Description
This lesson prompts students to create a vision poster for the entrepreneurial aspects of their journalism program, detailing their current reality and describing improvements that should be made.
Objectives
- Students will collaborate with peers to articulate the strengths and weaknesses of their own journalism program, specifically focusing on entrepreneurship.
- Students will discuss their evaluations of their own entrepreneurial activities in a small group and whole-class setting, offering their own insights and ideas about them and working with others.
- Students will collaboratively create a vision poster for their program, synthesizing and detailing exactly how they want their program to look at the end of their learning.
Common Core State Standards
| CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.1 | Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively. |
| CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.1a | Come to discussions prepared, having read and researched material under study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence from texts and other research on the topic or issue to stimulate a thoughtful, well-reasoned exchange of ideas. |
| CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.1b | Work with peers to set rules for collegial discussions and decision-making (e.g., informal consensus, taking votes on key issues, presentation of alternate views), clear goals and deadlines, and individual roles as needed. |
| CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.1c | Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that relate the current discussion to broader themes or larger ideas; actively incorporate others into the discussion; and clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions. |
| CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.1d | Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives, summarize points of agreement and disagreement, and, when warranted, qualify or justify their own views and understanding and make new connections in light of the evidence and reasoning presented. |
| CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.3 | SL.9-10.3 Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence. |
Length
120-140 minutes (two 60-70-minute classes)
Resources
Completed “What about us?” reflections
Poster paper
Markers, colored pencils, crayons, etc.
White paper
A whiteboard with dry erase markers OR a document camera OR computer with projector
Sticky notes
Lesson step-by-step
Day 1
1. Groups and reflections — 5 minutes
Place students in groups, or allow them to form their own groups, of 3-5 students, resulting in six groups total. Give each group a packet of sticky notes. Students also will need a pen or a pencil and their completed “What about us?” reflections, which they may have done for homework in an earlier lesson from this unit. If you are using this lesson as a standalone activity, make sure you distribute this worksheet in advance of the lesson.
2. Sticky note activity — 30 minutes
Go through each of the six questions from the reflection sheet and prompt students to write single words or phrases on sticky notes that represent their answers to those questions. Each answer should go on a different sticky note. Between each question, students should pool their sticky note answers to the question with the sticky notes that their group members wrote and leave the pile for sorting later. This process of reading a question, giving students time to write answers on sticky notes, then having them pool their sticky note answers with their peers’ sticky note answers should take about five minutes per question, for a total of 30 minutes.
3. Categorization — 5 minutes
Explain to the students that each one of the six groups will be responsible for organizing all of the sticky notes into categories for one particular question. For example, there will be one group that will review and organize all of the sticky notes with single word or short phrase answers to the question, “What is going well?,” while another group reviews and organizes all of the sticky note answers to the question, “What is not?,” a third group will review and organize the sticky notes for, “Which types of entrepreneurial activities are being addressed and which are left out?,” and so on.
4. Question activity — 10 minutes
Assign questions to each group and then collect and redistribute all of the sticky note answers for each question to the respective groups. It is probably easiest to do this one question at a time by assigning a group a question number and then sending a representative from that group to retrieve the sticky note piles for their question from each of the other five groups. This will probably take 5-10 minutes.
5. Reorganization activity — 10 minutes
Instruct the student groups to review all of the sticky note responses to their question and organize them in 4-6 general categories. For example, possible sticky note responses to “What is going well?,” could include: yearbook sales, advertising sales, newspaper subscriptions, website clicks, communication, audience participation and Facebook likes. A student team might group these responses into the following categories: Sales (yearbook, advertising, newspaper) and Engagement (website clicks, communication, audience participation, Facebook likes). Most likely, each group will have 20-30 sticky notes to work with, so they should be able to come up with at least 4 different categories. Student groups should name their categories and group all the sticky notes for that category in small piles on their desks. This organization process should take 10-15 minutes.
6. Mapping — 5 minutes
As student groups finish, ask each individual student to take out a piece of paper and draw a concept map that illustrates the question, categories, and within-category answers to the question. See “Concept Map Example” for an illustration of what this might look like. Students should finish these maps for homework if they are not completed by the end of the class period.
Day 2
1. Grouping — 5 minutes
Form new student groups that contain one person from each question group. This is important so that there is a student representative for each of the six questions. Students should bring their completed concept maps to their new groups.
2. Presentation — 20-25 minutes
Give student groups 20-25 minutes to present and discuss the consolidated and organized responses to each of the six questions. Group members should allow each student 2-3 minutes to share the concept map that they created out of their original group discussion, including the general categories and examples of answers within those categories. Other group members should ask questions, critique the conclusions drawn by the original groups, and look for similarities and differences to their own concept maps.
3. Poster paper activity — 10-15 minutes
Give each group of six a piece of poster paper and a set of several large markers. Groups should write, “Our Entrepreneurial Vision” at the top of their posters and then detail 8-10 specific goals that they have for the entrepreneurial side of the program. Groups should have 10-20 minutes to complete these posters.
4. Presentations — 10-15 minutes
After posters are completed, one member of each group should present the poster to the rest of the class and all posters should be hung/posted on a wall for the whole class to see. This should take 10-15 minutes.
5. Large group discussion — 5-10 minutes
Facilitate a discussion with students about common trends among the posters. Since each group went through a similar process with similar source material, there should be several common goals.
6. Final poster — 10 minutes
Make a final “Our Entrepreneurial Vision” poster that is a consolidated list of all the student responses. You might circle similar responses as they show up on the posters and students notice them in the discussion or just ask for student input and suggestions based on the common trends they see in the posters. Either way, finish the unit with a solid list of 5-10 goals for the program. This will provide a way for you to customize the lesson based on the students’ individual goals throughout the course.
Differentiation
Instead of working on the“What about us?” reflections and concept maps individually, students might complete them in pairs to facilitate and speed their thinking process.