Classroom Activities
Activity 1: Providing Historical Context
Objective: Students will be able to explain how government policies and other social factors produced urban communities such as Eastwood in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Description: This lesson will follow the blended learning model from the Modern Classrooms Project. Students will first watch several short instructional videos for their history instruction: one on housing discrimination, one on the war on drugs, and one on economic disinvestment. They will take guided notes as they watch the videos, then complete a cause-and-effect activity linking the historical factors to the phenomena observed by Ralph in Eastwood. After reviewing their notes and completing the practice activity, students will take a mastery check asking them: “With reference to at least two factors, explain how government policies and other social factors produced urban communities such as Eastwood in the latter half of the twentieth century.” Their paragraph response will be assessed for achievement of the objective. If they show understanding, they can move on to the next lesson; if not, they will have an opportunity to discuss with the teacher and revise their response (with no grade penalty). Students who easily master the lesson will have an opportunity to challenge themselves with a bonus (“aspire to do”) activity focusing on historical housing policies in our own city of Tulsa.
Activity 2: Thought, Question, Epiphany Discussion
Objectives: Students will be able to contribute to a class discussion and demonstrate their understanding of the reading.
Description: This activity is an example of the discussion protocol that I plan to use every week with my students to help them dive into the anchor text, chapter by chapter. The goal of this activity is threefold: first, to help students engage meaningfully with the text, second, to help students practice discussion skills, and third, to assess whether they did the reading. Students will have read the chapter before this activity, either at home or during designated class reading time. The exercise begins by providing students a short amount of silent, independent time to record their thoughts, questions, and epiphanies regarding the text. Sentence stems will be provided for students who struggle with generating ideas. “What surprised you?”, “What confused you?”, “One thing I had never thought about before was…”, “One way the ethnographer was present/not present in this chapter was...” are a few ideas. Next, students are put in groups, assigned or selected, and each person shares their TQEs. The group then selects the “top two” for each category and shares them with the class. Finally, the teacher moderates a whole class discussion of these TQEs. Student reading is assessed very simply: did the student participate to an extent that showed they read critically? If so, a check mark (and a grade) for that week. For a dense academic text, it is important to hear out students’ questions and fill in any gaps of understanding of vocabulary, theory, or concepts. These discussions might turn in a variety of directions, such as to history, to ethics, or to mapping out all the interlocutors in Renegade Dreams, but the TQE format provides a way to start.
Activity 3: Interviews on “Renegade Dreams”
Objective: Students will be able to practice their interviewing skills, form relationships with their classmates, and develop empathy.
Description: As an in-class assignment to help students connect the text to their lives, students will be asked to conduct a short interview with a classmate about their “renegade dreams.” This will require students to first unpack what Ralph means by the phrase and how they would think about it with reference to their own dreams. A short worksheet or graphic organizer can help them structure these thoughts. Then, students build empathy with their classmates by generating interview questions. Some training in interviewing and listening skills needs to be provided before this activity. It would also be helpful to give some example questions, such as, “What do you want to do one day that some people might think is crazy?”, “What is a passion that you have that I might not know about?”, “What would you do if you had a million dollars and you couldn’t do anything ‘practical’ with it?”, and “What do you do that is ‘renegade’?” After students conduct the interview and take notes, they write a short paragraph summing up their classmate’s “renegade dreams.” This could also become a larger class project or discussion where students share out the class’s “renegade dreams.”
Activity 4: Belonging and Exclusion at Our School
Objective: Students will be able to draw connections between the unit and their experiences in high school, as well as develop productive ideas about how we can improve our school.
Description: In this interactive activity, students reflect on where they have experienced or witnessed belonging and exclusion at school. This could follow a discussion of the anchor text, be a stand-alone lesson, or work as a hook activity. It is intended to show the relevance of the unit and give students a sense of ownership over their school. Give students pieces of scrap paper and set up bins, boxes, or hats labeled with sentence stems including, “One time I felt I belonged at school was….”, “One time I felt excluded at school was…”, “One thing we do well as a school to make people feel included is…”, “One thing we can improve is…”, and “One thing that holds us together as a student body is…” Have students write their responses on the scrap paper and then submit them to the bins. This is obviously a vulnerable activity, so it may be best done anonymously, and at a point in the year when trust and class culture has been established. It should also be preceded by a disclaimer about not sharing anything that would be necessary to report, such as harassment, and be willing to speak to the teacher about it if you do choose to share such sensitive information. After submitting to the bins, put students in groups to sort through one bin and identify themes or commonalities. They can record these on chart paper or on the board. Then, as a class, go over the themes and facilitate a whole class discussion about how our school is doing well or needs to improve. Prompt students, in groups, to generate specific ideas or action items that could make our school more inclusive. This could then be shared with the administration or others.
Activity 5: Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork
Objective: Students will be able to apply their knowledge of anthropological concepts and ethnography to conduct their own abbreviated fieldwork.
Description: This lesson includes part of the “internal assessment” that my Social and Cultural Anthropology students need to complete for the IB. It is an extension of an initial observation students conduct at the beginning of the school year. In this activity, completed over the course of the entire unit, students propose their fieldwork, conduct it, and write a summary of the data. They may choose from several methods, including classic participant observation, interviews, visual anthropology (photography, video), surveys, or life history. It is essential that they connect this fieldwork to a key concept we have studied earlier in the year, or one or more of the key concepts of this unit: belonging, exclusion, identity, power, social relations, race, caste, place, class, gender, etc. Students will be assessed on several criteria. First, does the research method align with the concepts under study? If a student is interested in people’s perception of the role of race in their personal lives, it may make sense to conduct a life history or interviews, whereas if a student is interested in who is excluded at lunch in the cafeteria, it would make more sense to do participant observation. Second, can the student clearly explain the link between what they observed and the concepts? Third, can the student analyze the data (in the form of fieldnotes, transcripts, etc.) and provide insights into its meaning? This activity is the culmination and summative assessment for the entire unit.
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