Lesson Plan – 8th Grade

Background & Introduction:The students are working on an interdisciplinary unit, How Rock Music Affects Our Culture. This unit involves social studies, music and language arts classes and will culminate in a Rock Music Fair featuring informational booths, performances, presentations and other displays. This specific lesson is toward the beginning of the project, after students have chosen their rock musician of choice, but before they have done any heavy-duty research.

Goal:To gather biographical information on a rock musician from different types of sources, and evaluate those sources to choose the most relevant information.

Specific Learning Objectives:

Learn the differences and similarities between different types of non-fiction sources, using comparison/contrast technique.

Choose which criteria are most important for judging resources.

Collect biographical information about rock musicians to use in final product.

Standards Addressed:

Indiana Academic Standards

Language Arts

Standard 2 - READING: Comprehension and Analysis of Nonfiction and Informational Text

8.2.3Find similarities and differences between texts in the treatment, amount of coverage, or organization of ideas.

Information Literacy Standards

Standard 3 – The student who is information literate uses information affectively and creatively.

Standard 5 – The student who is information literate appreciates literature and other creative expressions of information.

Resources:

Media Center Resources

2 biographical articles per student, which they must bring to class. Obtained from:

Inspire Databases -

Student Resource Center

Gale Group’s Biography Resource Center

Newspaper Source

Academic Search Elite

Rolling Stone Artist Pages –

The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin (10 vols.) – borrowed from public library

Media center work space

Documents

Rock Music Biographies: How do the compare? Worksheet

How Rock Music Affects Our Culture – Inquiry Project Checklist

Reflection Journals

Example Information Resources

Star Magazine

Rolling Stone

Prior Activities: Before this lesson, students have gone through the Watching, Wondering, Webbing phases of Annette Lamb’s 8 W’s Inquiry Model. They have defined a rock musician of interest, created a web of questions on this person, and located materials on this person. Students were to choose two brief biographical information sources to use in this lesson.

Activities:

Introduction & Instructions:

Introduce the topic of informational and non-fiction sources to students and how these sources may be much different even though they cover the same topic. For example, People magazine may have a great article on Sheryl Crow and Lance Armstrong breaking up, but this biographical information is not really pertinent to how she and her music affects our culture. A better and more comprehensive source might be Gale Group’s Biography Resource Center.

Make the real world connection that good journalists, writers, and researchers must use the best possible information sources.

Pass out the Rock Music Biographies: How do the compare?Worksheet, andgo over the definitions of the criteria for judging information sources: Treatment, Organization, Coverage, Authority, Currency, Bias, Accuracy.

Opportunity for Mini-Lesson: If students are having trouble understanding the meaning of the criteria, use two different examples and cover each of the criteria. Examine print

or internet versions of Star Magazine and Rolling Stone. For example, show how

Star Magazine lacks in accuracy, or show how Rolling Stone has been known for its

high journalistic standards and coverage of more than just music for nearly four

decades.

Brainstorming:

Ask students to get in small groups and brainstorm 2-3 questions for each of the seven criteria on the worksheet, which they are going to ask while reading their articles. After they have brainstormed questions, reconvene the whole class.

Additional Scaffolding: Visit brainstorming groups to monitor their progress with questioning. If they are having trouble, prompt them with the following possibilities:

Treatment: Is this for entertainment or education purposes?

Organization: Does the order of the article make sense?

Coverage: Does my source give complete information about this musician?

Authority: What are the author’s qualifications?

Currency: Is this information too old to use in my project?

Bias: Does the author seem to be especially for or against this rock musician?

Accuracy: Do my two articles contradict each other?

Tell the students that they will use five of these criteria and their questions to compare and contrast their articles.

Reading:

Tell students to start reading their articles with their five criteria in mind. Let them know that they may be able to find all information in their articles, but they also may need to refer to the original sources for more information. For example, they may need to look at the encyclopedia volume to see who the publisher is or look up an author on the internet, to establish authority.

Give students a fair amount of time to read their articles, take notes, and make comparisons/contrasts between their two articles.

Reflection:

Ask students to record their thoughts on the process of judging their sources and their findings in their Reflection Journal.

Collect worksheets and journals.

Follow-up Activities: Students will now continue on their journey through the 8 W’s toward the culminating Rock Music Fair. They will collect more relevant sources with the knowledge gained in this lesson, read and take notes, synthesize ideas, develop a final project, and participate in the Rock Music Fair and its committees.

Assessment:

Collect worksheets and assess each students understanding of their information sources and the criteria with which to judge them.

Check students’ Reflection Journals to see how they grasped the concepts in this lesson.

After checking worksheets and Reflection Journals, assess the effectiveness of the lesson. How did the lesson go? Is there anything that could be improved for next time?

*This lesson plan layout is based on a template, created by Nancy Miller and Connie Champlin, which is available at

Kathy Mulder - 1