PAIDEIA SEMINAR LESSON PLAN:

Text: Phones through the Ages (actual phones – no text)

Grade / Subject: 6th Grade Social Studies

Ideas, Values: Human Innovation, technology, progress, material qualities (strength, flexibility, weight)

Pre-Seminar Content

• Launch Activity: 4 Corners Activity “People are ____ making stuff better” (Always, Sometimes, Rarely, Never) – discuss with your group why you are here – pick a speaker to explain out to the class.

• Inspectional read: In small groups, Silently look at the phones on the table, pick them up, etc. (2 minutes per group)

• Background: Be sure to show kids how rotary phones work.  

• Vocabulary Development: handset, rotary dial, touch tone, receiver

• Analytical read: Fill out the graphic organizer – What do you see? How are the phones different from each other? How are the phones alike?

Pre-Seminar Process

• Define and state purpose for Paideia Seminar.
• Describe the responsibilities of facilitator and participants.
• Have participants set a Personal Goal.  
• Agree on a Group Goal. Through dialogue to have a greater understanding of the ideas of the text, of ourselves, and of each other.  

Seminar Questions

Opening (Identify main ideas from the text.): 1

• Which phone is most interesting? Explain.

Core (Analyze textual details.): 3-5

• If you were asked to put these phones into 2 (or 3) categories which ones would be grouped together? Why?
• What qualities do these phone have in common? How do they differ?
• Put these phones in chronological order? Explain your thinking for that order?
• -Once the phones are in the “right order” – What problem were people trying solve with each new innovation?
• Which innovations might have been the hardest? The easiest?
• What would the advantage of ____ phone have been? What are the disadvantages?
• How did material technology affect how the phones changed over time?

Closing (Personalize and apply the textual ideas.): 

• How has phone innovation changed the lives of people?

Post-Seminar Process

• Have participants do a written self-assessment of their personal participation goal.
• Do a group assessment of the social and intellectual goals of seminar.
• Note reminders for next seminar.

Post-Seminar Content 

• Transition to Writing: What ideas did you read or hear that gave you a better understanding of the ideas/values of seminar?

• Writing Task: How is phone innovation like other technological innovations of the past? (stone to iron age)?

The entire lesson plan can be seen in the attachment “3 Column Map”