Everyday Ethics: the Finer Points of Ethical Decision Making in Button, Button by Richard
Matheson
Lesson Design by Jordan Kuszak, Ali Larson, and Brett Sales
March 15th, 2012
Grade Level: 8
Time Frame: Four 50-minute Classes
Essential questions:
1) How can we use a text to get students to actively consider the weight of the
decisions they make?
2) How will students’ analysis of the ethically charged decisions of characters in a
text spur a critical consideration of the decision-making process at work in their
own lives and how can this interaction most effectively be expressed in an
original way?
3) What is the benefit of teaching grammar in the context of a free-form creative
piece of writing?
Rationale:
One of our goals as educators is to help our students come to a better understanding of
how to use the English language. Instrumental in this is leading students to actively engage in
literary analysis and thoughtful composition. Our job as educators extends far beyond literary
analysis and composition in the classroom, however. We have to make every effort to ensure that
what we’re teaching in some way connects to students’ interaction with the wider world. In the
context of this particular lesson, we will be using literary analysis of Button, Button, by Richard
Matheson, to give students a space in which to think critically, creatively, and ethically about
their own experiences with ethical decision making in the world and then communicate those
experiences in their own writing.
Because students in middle school are soon going to be entering a phase in their lives
where an empathetic understanding of the world will require the fair consideration of multiple
perspectives, the primary competency at work here will be ethical thinking. In regards to ethical
thinking, Lipman says “education is not the extraction of a reasonable adult out of a reasonable
child, but a development of the child’s impulses to be reasonable” (Lipman 263). We know our
students will be naturally inclined to want to make reasonable decisions, and we believe our
lesson will start them on the path to thinking about what exactly should go into making those
decisions.
Objectives:
1) Students will learn to actively “read” social texts for comprehension and analysis. As part
of this analysis students will also be expected to draw and justify conclusions about the
ethics of decision-making according to context.
a) Students will work collaboratively in small groups to uncover meaning in the
texts they’re analyzing.
b) In small and large group discussion students will be asked to communicate their
interpretations of the text, using supporting evidence from the text and their own
experiences to back up their reasoning.
2) Students will compare and contrast the moral situations described in multiple social texts,
understanding what circumstances may play into a certain decision.
3) Students will be able to understand the concept of a narrative arc and apply it to their
comprehension of the text and their own narrative.
a) Comprehension of the narrative arc concept will include an understanding of the
terms exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution and the
ability to identify them at work in a piece of writing.
4) Students will be able to write to exemplify understanding of the three competencies of
thinking.
a) Students will recreate a scene using dialogue and other storytelling techniques to
tell an original story.
b) Students will fully consider the ethical implications of their experience and write
to accurately portray them.
c) Students will have to critically consider their prior knowledge and experience in
the terms newly defined by class discussion regarding ethical decision-making
and literary analysis.
Context:
Ideally, we would be teaching this lesson as the beginning of a unit centered on choices—
namely, how the choices we make are influenced by others and how our choices impact the
people around us. Eventually, the unit would develop into the ultimate exercise of empathetic
understanding: a consideration of social injustice currently on display in the world today. This
topic is very broad in scope, however, and in order to do it justice we would first focus on the
individual with our analysis of Button, Button. Through our analysis, informal, and formal
assessments, students will come to an understanding of how a decision of theirs influenced their
lives. After working with Button, Button, we will move on to an analysis of a novel dealing with
ethical questions in the context of situations laden with peer pressure and how other people affect
the choices we make, such as The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, by Sherman
Alexie. Finally, we will end the unit by reading A Wreath for Emmett Till. At the conclusion of
this unit, students will have a fully developed narrative in which they consider how an ethical
choice(s) impacted their lives and the lives of those around them and what influenced the making
of that choice(s).
Introductory Set:
1) What is your definition of ethics?
2) Who decides what is right or wrong or ethical? Does it come from authority? Is there a
difference between collective and personal ethics? Can the two be different and both be
“right?”
3) What do you take into consideration when you compile your own ethical principles?
4) If no one’s watching or if there are no consequences, does acting ethically matter? Why?
Procedures:
Day 1:
1. Milgram experiment reenactment—5 minutes
2. Debriefing questions orally as class—5 minutes
a) Why did you do it?
b) Would you all have done it?
3. Watch Milgram experiment video w/ background—10 minutes
a) Introduce first two questions of introductory set.
4. Small group discussions—10 minutes
a) Assign questions to small groups and have groups answer questions
5. Large group discussion—10
a) Groups report findings and discuss questions leading into tomorrow’s reading
of Button, Button
6. Freewrite about a time when they had to make an ethical decision—10 minutes
a) Notify class that the story will be part of the final project
Homework: Embellish story
Day 2:
1. Large Group discussion reviewing yesterday’s group findings—10 minutes
2. Intro to Button, Button—5 minutes
a) Author background and story context.
3. Read Button, Button out loud (teacher or audio recording)—15 minutes
4. Large group discussion of story—20 minutes
Day 3:
1. Introduce notion of the narrative arc and explain/discuss—10 minutes
2. In pairs: plot Button, Button narrative on narrative arc diagram—20 minutes
3. Debrief with class; share/discuss—10 minutes
4. Directed freewrite: plot out your own narrative—10 minutes
Homework: find a genuine conversation with anyone (text message, IM, facebook, email,
real life, etc) and bring it the next day (5-8 exchange conversation)
Day 4 – Grammar:
1. Explain dialogue and good techniques for writing dialogue—5 minutes
2. Teacher model example with class participation (“Spice things up!”)—10 minutes
3. Students enliven their artifacts—10 minutes
4. Verbs/adverbs definition work—5 minutes
5. “Spice verbs/adverbs up” on overhead/board—10 minutes
6. Free write: spice up narrative—10 minutes
Homework: Bring a 1st draft for next class
Formal Assessment:
For the formal assessment of our lesson we will have students write a narrative about an
instance in which they had to make an ethical decision. Integral to the compilation of their
narrative will be the execution of effective techniques for writing dialogue and skillfully
employing verbs and adverbs in correlation with our in-context grammar lesson.
Formal Assessment Rubric:
Content – 40%:
-Must be based on a central ethical issue.
-Must include at least 2 exchanges of dialogue between two or more people.
-Must include a reflection on the ethical situation answering these questions: Why did
you make the choice you did? Did you make the right choice? Why/why not? Would you
change it if you could?
Organization – 10%:
-Must include a title.
-Must be 2-3 pages, double-spaced.
Conventions – 50%:
-Proper use of Dialogue
-Varied use of verbs and adverbs
-Varying sentence structure
-Proper spelling and punctuation
Informal Assessment:
Our informal assessment will consist of completion of daily writing as well as students’
active participation in small and large group discussion.
Materials Needed:
1. Enough soda for every student.
2. Computer and Internet access to Youtube
3. Projector
4. Milgram Experiment video
5. Copies of short story Button, Button, by Richard Matheson
6. Narrative arc handouts
7. Narrative arc blank diagrams
8. Overhead projector/ELMO
9. Verb/adverb activity
10. Copies of Teacher dialogue model
Grammar Lesson:
Essential questions:
1. How does narrative writing benefit from the skillful employment of dialogue?
2. How does the active use of varied verbs and adverbs make writing more engaging?
Rationale:
Students need to understand the role of dialogue and engaging verbs and adverbs in
bringing a text to life. Our selected text, Button, Button, employs these techniques
especially well, and so students will be able to see a model of what their effective use
looks like so they can more fully understand how they might utilize dialogue and diverse
verbs and adverbs to enhance their own writing.
Objectives:
1) Comprehend traits of effective dialogue writing and apply to their own writing.
2) Comprehend what verbs and adverbs are, how to use them skillfully, and be able to
transfer this understanding to their own writing.
Introduction/anticipatory set:
1. How does dialogue work in real life? How is that similar to or different from written
dialogue?
2. What are the roles of verbs and adverbs in writing?
Procedures:
Day 4 – Grammar:
1. Explain dialogue and good techniques for writing dialogue—5 minutes
2. Teacher model example with class participation (“Spice things up!”)—10 minutes
3. Students enliven their artifacts—10 minutes
4. Verbs/adverbs definition work—5 minutes
5. “Spice verbs/adverbs up” on overhead/board—10 minutes
6. Free write: spice up narrative—10 minutes
Homework: Bring a 1st draft for next class
Closure and assessment features:
Our grammar lesson is integral to our students’ understanding of how to complete the
formal assessment for the lesson as a whole. We will evaluate student understanding of
the concepts of effective dialogue and verb and adverb use by the presence of dialogue
and diverse verbs and adverbs on display in their own writing, as per the following
guidelines of the formal assessment rubric:
Content:
--Must include at least 2 exchanges of dialogue between two or more people.
Conventions:
--Proper use of Dialogue
--Varied use of verbs and adverbs
We will further assess students’ understanding of the contents of our grammar lesson by
their participation in our in-class “spicing up” of bland dialogue and verb/adverb use.
This will extend to encompass students’ display of dialogue and verb/adverb use as
evident in their writing journals and homework. Such will be the contents of our informal
assessment.
Six Essential Curriculum Design Questions:
1) What do you want students to learn?
We want students to be able to apply aspects of critical, caring, and creative thinking to
social texts and their own experience.
Critical thinking: students will display comprehension and analysis of social texts.
Caring thinking: students will elicit an emotional response to our social texts and
analyze how that response affects their reading of the texts.
Creative thinking: students will take what they have read and express it in a
creative project, utilizing prior experience in some way.
A) Why are these your beliefs/ ideas?
We believe the combination of these three schools of thought fosters the ability of
our students to act in critically literate ways on the world in which they live.
B) How is “what counts as the content of English” determined?
We search out texts that bear analysis of the English language in such a way that
will help students use English to make meaning from their lives. When you study
English you’re studying more than the words on the page. You’re studying
it to gain meaning from the text that can affect you in some way. How you
interact with the text determines the meaning you make. We’re teaching students
to interact with texts in meaningful ways (comprehension, analysis, composition,
etc.).
2) Why do you want students to learn these things?
We’re giving students an opportunity to become better users of the English language.
For example, you shouldn’t leave an English classroom without being able to analyze a
social text and make a connection between it and the world as you know it. Because the
texts we’re dealing with are concerned with personal ethics, the connection we will be
fostering is one that will instill morals and skills in students that need to be in operation
every day in and out of school.
A) Why are these your justifications and where do they come from?
State standards dictate that these are the types of things we need to be teaching
students. The following state standards dictate that the lessons we have prepared
for students are essential:
Reading:
12.1.1: By the end of the twelfth grade, students will identity the basic
facts and essential ideas in what they have read or viewed.
12.1.3: By the end of the twelfth grade, students will identify, analyze, and
apply knowledge of the basic forms of text and various literary genres.
12.1.8: By the end of the twelfth grade, students will interpret the meaning of
poetry, drama, prose-fiction, and non-fiction film, or media by using different
analytic techniques and presenting specific evidence from the text.
These standards provide rationale for both reading Button, Button and for
analyzing the texts through comparison-contrast and various strategies.
Writing:
12.2.3: By the end of the twelfth grade, students will produce varied written texts
that communicate effectively in expository and narrative prose.
12.2.4: By the end of the twelfth grade, students will use creative and critical
thinking strategies and skills to generate original and meaningful products.
These standards provide rationale for our personal narrative writing assignment.
Speaking:
12.3.1: By the end of the twelfth grade, students will pose questions and
contribute their own information or ideas in group discussion.
This standard provides rationale for our students to engage in extensive
conversation about Button, Button in both large and small groups.
Listening:
12.4.1: By the end of the twelfth grade, students will use listening skills for a
variety of purposes.
This standard provides rationale for students to consistently listen to the instructor
and one another in class discussion over the text.
B) What are the most effective ways to develop and communicate your justifcations?
The most effective way to develop justifications for teaching is to think critically
about what we want our students to learn and consult authorities that have
conducted research on the matter—like the Lipman text. Only when we apply our
justifications to practice, however, do we truly discover their merit. Before we
begin teaching, we need to communicate our justifications to students by
connecting them to a “big idea” students can latch onto as meaningful and
practical. In this case, making a personal connection to the ethical basis of the
decisions students make is a very relevant idea for 8th graders.
3) How will we know if students have learned or understood what we want them to?
We will know if students are understanding on the level we want them to if they are
demonstrating an understanding of the reading in their discussion and writing.
A) Why are these your beliefs?
These displays are measurable evidence that students are engaging and interacting
with the text. We will be able to see and hear students’ interpretations of the text
first hand and facilitate their understanding from there.
B) How might this be determined in teaching contexts?
We will have rubrics for both our informal and formal assessments that will
determine if students fully understand what we want them to learn. We will be
sure to evaluate students’ efforts to make meaning from the text on an individual
basis. Participation in discussion will help students better analyze the text, which
will in turn have an effect on how they develop their formal assessment.
4) Why are you going to determine your students understanding in these ways?
We believe the more creative forms of assessment we are emphasizing do not promote
rote learning—the accumulation of knowledge—but understanding. If students know
they’re going to take a test at the conclusion of a reading based on random facts from the
book, they’re going to read the text differently—and more superficially—than if they
know they’re going to have to develop a meaningful composition from their interaction
with the text.
A) Where do these ideas come from? Why?
These ideas come from experiences in accidental apprenticeships where we have
seen these principles at work. None of us have ever had a positive experience with
a class where an understanding of a text was based on our accurate regurgitation
of surface details from the text. However, classes that have forced us to make
personal connections with the text and explain that interaction have been much
more beneficial across the board.
B) Why do these ways “make sense” to you?
Our personal experiences as students have informed us that when we read a text
for a test, we don’t come to the same understanding as when we read a text for a
more authentic, meaningful purpose. Creative assignments that have tasked us
with scouring our own experiences for ways of making meaning from reading of a
text lead to a more authentic engagement with the material.
5) How are you going to facilitate your students’ learning of the things you want them to learn?
We will lead students in discussion by asking thought provoking and open-ended
questions, encouraging students to think beyond the “right/wrong” answer paradigm.
Also, we will model writing techniques with the goal that students will become
comfortable sharing their thoughts in a forum and writing about them.
A) Why are these your beliefs and where do they come from?
We’ve learned about the benefits of modeling writing and encouraging openended discussion in several of the English education classes we’ve taken thus far.
Additionally, we’ve seen the benefits first hand when teachers use these
techniques in the classroom.
B) How might you determine the best ways to facilitate student understanding of the
school subject “English?”
We determine our methods by drawing from what we’ve read and what we’ve
seen in action. Then, if our own interpretation of that is effective, we continue to
use those methods—if not, we modify our methods to reflect the needs of our
students. For example, we mention we want students to think outside of the
“right/wrong” answer paradigm, a tenant we can gather from Lipman’s idea that
“An inventive thought contains many problems and many relevant, promising
ideas” (Lipman 247). If our students are too focused only on the “problems” in
their inventive thinking, they may discount what they have in the way of
“relevant, promising” ideas. However, because students are traditionally taught
that there is usually only a single “right” answer, we may have to try a number of
different methods to get them to see that an idea that doesn’t align with the “right”
answer can be immensely valuable too.
6) Why are you going to facilitate your students learning in these ways? What are your
justifications and rationales? What, then, is your theory of learning the content of the school
subject English?
Honestly, we believe that the methods we’ve outlined above have the potential to be very
effective mechanisms for helping our students come to an understanding of what we want
them to learn about ethical decision making in the context of social texts and their own
lives. We’ve compiled these methods with the notion that we should always aim to
engage our students in similarly meaningful forms of instruction so they can transfer
what they learn into an understanding of what it takes to be a productive and
conscientious member of society.
Questions to consider during lesson development to…
Foster critical thinking:
1. In his explanation of the key role judgment plays in critical thinking, Lipman says the
making of thoughtful judgments mandates that “knowledge and experience are not
merely possessed, but applied to practice” (Lipman 210). What steps can we take to
ensure that what we teach bears practical application or is meaningful to our students?
2. Lipman stresses that “claims and opinions must be supported by reasons” (Lipman 212).
How can we impress upon our students the importance of carefully evaluating what they
think and believe by stringent criteria?
3. What can we do to help our students achieve self-corrective thought not only on an
individual, but also a communal basis? “One of the most important advantages of
converting the classroom into a community of inquiry is that members of the community
begin looking for and correcting each other’s methods and procedures” (Lipan 219).
4. “Individual situations need to be examined on their own terms and not forced into some
Procrustean bed of general rules and regulations” (Lipmman 219). How can we ensure
our students understand the importance of context when thinking critically?
5. According to Lipman, the critical thinker can “apply problem-solving techniques
appropriately in domains other than those in which they were learned” (Lipan 59). What
assessments can we implement to ensure that what we teach has transferrable potential?
Foster creative thinking:
1. Lipman states, “Creative thinking requires a constant trying out or testing,” but how can
we get students to separate the concept of creation from the fear of failure that often
prevents students from taking creative liberties (Lipman 245)?
2. How do we get students to trust in the novelty of their own thought processes? Lipman
believes “creative thinkers are those who ask questions where others are content to
proceed without further reflection” (Lipman 245).
3. Lipman notes, “creative thinking defies not the rules, but the odds” (Lipman 251). How
can we use this principal to form a union between the “rules” of grammar and creative
thought?
4. How much attention should teachers pay to fostering students’ ability to think creatively?
“Success of creative thought done by students hinges upon the ability of the practitioner
to understand and identify with the creative process from within” (Lipman 252).
5. How can we get students to think beyond the traditional right/wrong paradigm as they ask
questions and engage in discussions? “An inventive thought contains many problems and
many relevant, promising ideas” (Lipman 247).
Foster caring/ethical thinking:
1. Lipman states, "One can conceive of emotions as themselves forms of judgment or, more
broadly, forms of thought” (266). How can we safely provide students the opportunity to
render judgment based on emotion within the classroom? Is this a process that we should
value in the English classroom?
2. “To care is to focus on that which we respect, to appreciate its worth, to value its value”
(Lipman, 262). Due to the personal nature of caring, how can a teacher foster a
community of caring thinkers without stressing personal biases?
3. Empathetic thinking deals with “what happens when we put ourselves into another’s
situation and experience that person’s emotions as if they were our own” (Lipman, 269).
What types of pedagogical decisions must be made in order to foster a community of
empathy?
4. According to Lipman, “Caring has ample credentials as a cognitive enterprise, even
though it often consists of hardly discernible mental acts" (270). Due to caring's
ambiguous nature, how can teachers assess one's engagement in this type of thinking?
5. If thinking does not have a value component, it is liable to approach its subject matters
apathetically, indifferently, and uncaringly and this means it would be diffident even
about inquiry itself” (Lipman, 270). Is it possible for students or teachers to think
completely objectively, without a value component? Should they be able to?