Concepts Driving Censorship of Cont
​By:  Mark Foley

Project at a Glance :

Students will research, develop, and understand how local government influences what is taught in the classroom. ELA content is highly combative from town and town and students will come to an understanding of what they are exposed to at a young age influences their future decision making and choices.

Driving Question:

How does content come into and out of the classroom at the federal, state, and local levels?             

Standards:

• ELA STANDARD 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3., 4.1, & 4.2
• CE 2.1.1, CE 2.1.3, CE 2.1.4, CE 2.1.7,  CE 2.1.8, CE 2.1.9, ​CE 2.3.7, CE 2.3.8, CE 2.3.5  

Team / Culture Building:

• Creative DNA 
• Hopes, Fears, & Norms
• ​Spider Diagram
• Values Cards​

• ​Inner Heroes

Entry Event:

• Empathy Map & Entry Letter; The Entry Letter will include a letter to a ‘grandparent’ about what makes something worth and reading and how reading has impacted them​.

Stakeholders:

• Allendale Public Schools Community members
• Allendale Public Schools Staff
•  Allendale Public Schools Students
• The goal is to get students to think about each side of an issue before they make their own decisions. Specifically becoming an independent thinker when thinking about history, literature, and the arts.

Empathy Building:

• Help students think about what people do and say and how it hurts and helps people. Understanding our country’s history and what literature has impacted our parents, grandparents, books, and curriculum makes a society of smarter, stronger, and more empathic world.
• Pains and Gains Map​

Inquiry / Need to Knows:

• Define and understand censorship. Think about and understand age appropriate awareness. Uncover what books and movies are pushing us as a society to think about. NEED TO KNOW is about the concept of Knowledge is Power’.
• Understand the importance of discovering information using credible resources. 

Incubation:

• Students will gain an understanding of marketing techniques, trends, the art of persuasion, how money impacts everything, and the desire or undesirable attitude of apathy. When people don’t care, some people do care, and that’s how change happens.
• “Guide on the Side”  Students will be encouraged, motivated, persuaded, and empowered to make their own choices when thinking about the literature that they have been exposed to, and to the literature they will be continued to be exposed to.
• Solution ideas will come from one on one interviews, conversations with a variety of ages of people, research on the Internet, documentaries, and the study of literature as a history to American society.
• Anti - Problem ​protocol​​

• Tell it to a Toddler

Checking in:

• Daily check ins
• Use formative assessments such as exit tickets, a reader writer notebook, and conversational check-ins to make sure they are on task and making progress of answering the driving question.

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Solution Building:

• The goal for students is to understand the importance of leadership that affects what we think about and act upon as we progress through school. 
• Students narrow their 100 ideas down to 10 down,  5 and eventually 3.
• Gallery Walk - followed by feedback from other students.
  

Critique and Revision: 

• Students will create a timeline with a general overview of the PBL journey.
• Voice and Choice will be at the core of the project.  Students will honor connections they make through their research as they better understand censorship in the USA and the world around them.
• Critical Friends
  

Authentic Audience:

• Allendale community members
• Students from other English classes

Final Presentation:

• Students presented their solutions in a variety of formats, integrating their research and knowledge of censorship to answer the driving question.​

Click here for teacher's full plan.

​Reflection and Feedback:

• Reflection entries in student's Writer's Notebooks.
• Feedback from other students during a Gallery Walk.

Click here for the teacher's Journey through PBL on Padlet . . .

Meet the Educator:
Mark Foley teaches English at Allendale HIgh School.

     “You learn the work by doing the work” - “What would the future you, decide to now?”