Group-led lesson on social category

For this assignment, you will work in groups to plan and deliver a 50-55 minute lesson on a social category, such as gender, race, class, religion, age, ability, etc., with a particular focus on our context in Egypt and the Middle East. You will need to do some research to find out more about your social category and how that social category can influence our life experiences and our identities. This research should include both secondary and primary research--i.e. academic sources and interviews. You will need to select material to include in the lesson, and plan a lesson with activities to engage your classmates in learning about, discussing, and reflecting on the social category in more detail. The purpose of this assignment is to learn together more about how social categories affect our identities, and how this learning can shape how we want to be the change for injustices related to social categories.

Requirements (see Steps for more details)

• The lesson should be between 50-55 minutes long.

• Roles: Work as a group. The lesson must be planned and delivered by the whole group. Each member may work on different parts, but every member should be involved in both the planning and delivery stages. This means meeting together to plan and coordinate the work. To facilitate this process, each group member will choose a lead role: team manager, primary research leader, secondary research leader, lesson/slides leader, and delivery leader.

• Research: You must conduct research on your social category to find out how this category influences people's life experiences and identities. Here you should consider stereotypes, prejudice, privilege, and discrimination related to this category. Each group member should find at least one informative source (article or video) and write up a brief summary (150-200 words), along with the full citation of the source. You may find some useful sources linked on the Texts page of this website. Your group must also conduct interviews to learn about the experiences of diverse members of that social category. For example, if you are focusing on religion, you can interview someone who identifies as Christian, another as Muslim, another as agnostic, etc. Each group member should conduct one interview and type up a summary (min 150 words) of what you learned about that person in relation to the social category. The summary of the secondary source and primary source should be submitted as one document to Turnitin (each member will submit their own document).

• Lesson and slides: You must create slides for the lesson (uploaded by one group member, but created by all members). You should include a variety of activities in your lesson, including some material that you present to the class based on your summarized articles and interviews, as well as some kind of relevant practical activities and deeper discussion, and a personal reflection activity that encourages classmates to connect content to their own experience with the social category, in addition to any other activities you want to include. Your slides must be submitted to Turnitin (by one group member).

Steps in more detail

1. Getting started: Once your group has selected or been assigned a social category, meet with your group to decide on roles and times to meet, and agree on how to coordinate the work. Roles include: Team manager, primary research leader, secondary research leader, lesson/slides leader, and delivery leader. The team manager should ensure good team work and that all work gets done.

2. Research the social category (led by primary research leader and secondary research leader): Each group member should find one good, informative source (article or video) related to the social category and how it affects people. I recommend you put all your sources in a shared Google folder/doc to ensure you have a variety. Each member should summarize the source they found in their own words (150-200 words), along with a note of the full citation. Then, you should prepare an interview protocol which each member should use to interview one person each in relation to the social category, such that your interviewees represent good diversity in this social category. Each member should summarize what they learned from their interviewee (min 150 words). The source summary and interview summary should be submitted as one document per group member to Turnitin. You should then meet to share all of your findings with each other and decide what some of the key points are that emerged from this research that you would like to cover in the lesson, in terms of content. The research leaders will lead the discussion and decision making process.

3. Prepare lesson, materials, and slides (led by lesson/slides leader): As a group, you should think about the kinds of activities that can help your classmates to learn more about the social category. You should think about having a variety of activities that involve the classmates. For example, you can consider including some kind of a game, a brief presentation about the social category, a small free-writing task, whole class discussion, pairs coming up with discussion questions, group discussion, short video to listen and respond to, a short art activity like creating a 5 minute poster, a 1 minute exit paper where everyone writes down and shares their biggest takeaway from the lesson, etc.  Make sure that your activities include at minimum the following: presentation of content (including findings from sources and interviews), discussion, and personal reflection in which classmates can connect content to their own lives and identity constructions and being the change. Once you have agreed on the activities you want to include, you will need to prepare any materials required -- for example, a kahoot game, a prompt for a free-writing activity, questions for discussion activities, etc. Once you decide on the materials you need to prepare, you can divide up the work. The lesson/slides leader can coordinate the collection of the materials -- for inclusion in the slides. You should create slides that include a title slide, agenda slide, slides with important information you want to cover, and slides with instructions/prompts for activities, links to any other materials you are using, etc., and a slide with the references you used listed in APA style. The slides should be well organized, attractive, and proofread carefully. You can divide up the work of creating the slides, but the lesson/slides leader should tidy them up at the end -- make sure they are coherent, well-organized, etc. Slides should be submitted to Turnitin by the lesson/slides leader.

4. Prepare to deliver your lesson to the class (led by delivery leader): Decide who will do which part, bearing in mind that every group member must participate in delivering the lesson. You should try to divide it so that each member does roughly equal amount of work, throughout the whole process of preparation, as well as during the delivery of the lesson. The lesson delivery leader can help coordinate this process.

Grading

You will be graded on your effort to plan a well-thought-out lesson (including all requirements), and to engage your classmates in learning about social categories and how these categories affect us, and how we can be the change for injustices related to this social category. Please see the rubric below for more details on how you will be graded. 

Please note: The document each student submits that summarizes their source and interview is worth 5% of the 15% of the grade, and is graded individually. By submitting reasonably well-written summaries, you will receive full credit for this part of the grade. The lesson itself will receive 10% of the grade and is mainly a group grade (unless someone does not participate or appears to have not contributed much to the preparation). You must submit your slides to Turnitin in order to receive a grade on this part of the assignment, but please note: only ONE group member needs to submit the slides.