Peer Pressure and Profiling: A Pre-Reading Group Activity for Use with The Crucible
Lesson Description:
This lesson introduces students to the concept of racial profiling and how it continues today. They will relate the activities portrayed in Arthur Miller?s The Crucible to current events in today?s society. This eleventh grade lesson plan is the first lesson in The Crucible Unit Plan and will be taught prior to reading the play. It will take 60-90 minutes to complete.
Standards:
1.0: Writing: The student will develop the structural and creative skills necessary to produce written language that can be read and interpreted by various audiences.
· write to process knowledge, to clarify thinking, to synthesize and evaluate information, to improve study skills, to
gain confidence, and to promote lifelong communication.
4.0: Speaking and Listening: The student will express ideas clearly and effectively in a variety of oral contexts and apply active listening skills in the analysis and evaluation of spoken ideas.
· 4.01 Use and/or demonstrate an understanding of effective communications skills in a variety of speaking situations
Performance Objective:
Students will be able to:
· construct meaning from text by making connections between what they already know and the new information they
read
· create a written explanation to a selected topic/problem
Assessment
Students will identify common human reactions to pressure from peers in order to be able to apply the same concepts to the
characters in The Crucible for a formative assessment grade (worksheet).
Students will receive a formative group participation grade, dependent upon their contribution to the group and how well their
findings are presented to the class.
Purpose:
To identify common human reactions to pressure from peers in order to be able to apply the same concepts to the characters
in Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
Instructions
Part A: Introduction
Watch video clip about racial profiling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TzD0CYt7po
After watching the clip, the class will be asked to consider these questions:
Have you ever heard of racial profiling? Do we judge others by how they look, their ethnicity, or their social status?
Part B: Instruction
After a brief discussion, students will be placed in groups. Each group will be given the worksheet below, and I will read over the directions before beginning the activity. I will ask if everyone understands the task and if there are any questions. Then they will each read the scenario and begin answering the questions.
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On Whether or Not to Come to the Aid of One's Countryman:
Pre-Reading Group Activity for The Crucible
Directions: The following scenario describes a problem. Directly underneath the scenario is a list of possible solutions to that problem. Your mission is to read the scenario and the solutions, then rank the solutions according to the scales provided.
THE SCENARIO:
You are a student at Valley Ville High School. All is calm at Valley Ville, until one horrible day when a whole row of lockers is vandalized. Locks are cut open, books and personal items are stolen, destroyed, or scattered up and down the halls, the locker doors are badly bent so that they cannot be re-closed, and, to top the whole mess off, red and black spray paint has been used in a massive display of graffiti which extends from one end of the wall to the other. It is generally, but quietly, believed that the captain of the football team, Rod Bigman, and his football buddies were responsible; however, Rod and his buddies are Important Persons On Campus, and no one wants to get on their wrong side. Rod is popular and could ruin anyone's social standing in five minutes if he chose to do so. Circumstantial evidence, furthermore, seems to show that a very unpopular boy, Irwin P. Schneddlehopfer, was responsible. (Spray paint cans and several of the stolen items were found in his locker, which was suspiciously the only locker in that row which was untouched.) Irwin is not popular; he's the president of the Chess Club and treasurer of the Calculator Fanatics Club, he's skinny, wears big black-rimmed glasses which keep sliding down his nose, and pants hiked up to the waist (leaving his argyle socks and scruffy oxford shoes in plain view of the world) and cinched there with a belt to keep from falling down. Irwin, in short, is a nerd, a nice boy, but a nerd.
Since the damage to the lockers was assessed at something over $2,000, the administrators and the police are naturally anxious to apprehend the criminal, and Irwin is arrested almost immediately. Over the next two days, things really heat up. Since this is the first major crime in Valley Ville history, the papers really get a hold of it. Irwin, who had previously been up for full-ride scholarships to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Berkeley, is suddenly suspended from school pending his trial. His family is told he will not graduate unless he confesses, and that, if he does confess, he will have to work all summer to pay for the damage, he will forfeit his letters of recommendation from Valley Ville faculty, and he will have to write an extra term project on the effect of crime on the small town community. If he completes all those, he will graduate with a D- average.
One girl, Sally Cawshus, does think about going to the principal to tell him that the real culprit was Rod Bigman, but word of her intention gets out. That afternoon, 14 guys from the football team follow her and her little brother home, chase them into an alley, tear up their books, and threaten them with physical abuse if any "false charges" are made against Rod. Sally abandons her plan.
While Sally had been thinking of going to the principal with rumors she had heard, YOU actually know the truth. You were just passing by the school on your job delivering pizzas that fatal Friday night, and you saw Rod and his buddies getting out of their pick-up trucks with spray paint, bolt cutters, and sledge hammers.
What do you do?
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:
1. Keep quiet. You're up for election as student body president, your only chance to go to college is the baseball scholarship you're hoping to win as a result of your performance in the upcoming season, and Rod is a lot bigger than you are.
2. Call in an anonymous tip to the police, and hope they follow it up.
3. Have your parents set up a secret meeting with the authorities at a neutral spot which won't be associated with you in any way, and once you're secretly and safely at the meeting, agree to sign a secret affidavit, but refuse to testify in public at Irwin's trial.
4. Publicly defend Irwin.
YOUR GROUP'S TASK
Rankings: For each of the following questions, write the number of all four possible solutions ranked in order from most to least. Then write a sentence for each solution explaining why you placed it where you did.
NOTE: YOUR GROUP MUST AGREE ON PLACEMENTS!
1. Which of the solutions is the most sensible?
2. Which of the solutions is the easiest?
3. Which of the solutions is the most ethical, or morally right?
4. Which of the solutions do you think the average "Joe America" teenager is most likely to try?
5. Which of the solutions requires the most courage?
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Observation and Indirect Instruction:
While the students are working in groups, the teacher will observe how well the groups are working together, how effectively individual students are using rational arguments to support their positions, and to what extent the groups are able to come to consensus. He or she can make notes about which groups make particularly good points so that they can be called upon to provide their arguments during the whole-class discussion which follows. Each group will discuss their answers to the class and will decide on a name for their group according to their answers to the questions. For example, if they choose to ?go with the crowd? they may decide to call themselves ?the scapegoats?. I will provide them with a list of possible group names that correlate with the story. After reading The Crucible in its entirety, I will ask the students if they would like to change their group name and why. Do they now have a different opinion of certain circumstances? Has their perception been altered?
Part C: Closure
Students should identify such concepts as the following:
· people are not always likely to do what is right--especially in the face of peer pressure
· sometimes people have to be willing to make a personal sacrifice in order to do what is right
· what is popular is not always what is right
The teacher can prompt students to notice patterns they might otherwise miss and which are relevant to the literary work which will shortly be undertaken.
Part D: Modifications to Instructions
The teacher may choose to read the scenario aloud to the students prior to having them read it to themselves, or the teacher may have the students read the scenario to themselves, then read portions of it aloud and check for understanding. If a student did not want to work in a group setting, the teacher may allow students to perform the task individually.
For students with a fear of oral presentation, the may choose to assign each member of the group a different role and ask one member of the group to present the entire group's findings. The teacher could also have students turn in the group?s answers, and the teach could read the answers aloud to the class.
An extension to the lesson: Students choose one of the statements developed by the class and either refute or defend it using real life examples.
Materials:
Handout with scenario and instructions--one copy per student (provided in procedure below) Chalk & chalkboard or overhead projector, pens, and Internet access
