This blog will now enter the final phase of its current
effort. That effort is to give the
reader an inside view of an instructional planning process – at least one that
this developer is using. In real time,
this writer has been reporting his development of a unit of study designed to
be the final unit of a course of study.
The course is American government, a required senior level semester
course.
The topic of
this unit is foreign trade and how that trade affects job availability in the
US. This posting will describe lesson
eight of the unit. To date, the unit has
students become aware and research the role foreign trade has played in the
American economy since World War II.
During that historical time, the American economy has experienced
significant loss of jobs due to the shifting of manufacturing to other
countries and, some would argue to a much more significant level, automation.
The lesson
this posting will describe is one that sets out to have students engage in more
targeted research as they prepare their role in a debate. As was indicated in the last posting, the
class is to prepare to conduct two debates with each student having a role in
one of them. The class has been given
two debate questions (proposals) which asks whether a foreign trade policy, at
the state level, should be implemented or, if already in play, be augmented.
The two policy
proposals are:
·
The state government in
which the students live should rely on a “right-to-work” status the state either
currently has or should begin the process to attain (changing their laws to
acquire the status) to lure manufacturing activity to the state.
·
The state government in
which the students live should engage in an aggressive tax incentive strategy
to lure business activity to their state.
Here
is the lesson.
LESSON ON PREPARING A
DEBATE OVER STATE ACTION IN FOREIGN TRADE (part 2)
Objective:
Given a research role
in a debate preparation project, the student will identify and apply
appropriate information regarding his/her state’s policy in eliciting foreign
investments and/or the transfer of manufacturing facilities. This objective will be evaluated in terms of
the product of that research and its implementation in the debate activity.
Lesson steps:
Pre-lesson. See previous posting, “Setting the Problem,”
October 17, 2017, for this element’s description. In this eighth lesson, the “newsletter” will
be again provided by the newsletter group.
The factoids for this newsletter is provided by “Live Velshi and Ruhle,”
MSNBC, November 8, 2017. The factoids
are as follows:
·
Currently, trade with China amounts to
$648 billion a year.
·
Exports to China is $91 billion.
·
Imports from China is $365 billion
(exports exceed imports by about 4 times over).
Also, the claim that was
made on this MSNBC show is that China is not a currency manipulator – this can
be researched by students.
In addition, the teacher will prepare two
handouts. One, he/she hands out a
listing of all the insights the teacher research discovered. Two, he/she hands out student designations list
for the upcoming debate activity.
(Same day steps)
1. Teacher hands out the newsletter for the day, lists of insights,
and role designation for the upcoming debate activity. He/she explains to students what the
information is. Students are given time
to read the material while attendance is taken and other administrative items
are handled. (nine minutes)
2. Teacher divides class into groups, the affirmative debaters, the
negative debaters, and the interrogators.
3. Once in their groups, students begin discussing, strategizing, and
researching their part of the upcoming debate.
(most of the rest of the period)
4. Teacher circulates around the classroom to assist and monitors
students being on task.
5. As the period has about seven minutes left, the teacher calls on
representative from the affirmative and from the negative to work out a point
of stasis position. That is the position
or statement of the proposal that will be used to begin the debate. The point of stasis identifies with what both
sides agree. Often that means the actual
wordage of the proposal changes and becomes more nuanced.
6. Teacher ends period encouraging students to continue their
research and remind students that the next class period will conduct the
“right-to-work” debate.
Assignment: Student finishes preparing his/her role in
the debate.
That ends lesson eight.
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