Mini Lesson Topic (s) Bias
Grade 9
Subject Adv. English
Cooperating Teacher Jean Wright
Student Teacher Gretchen Smither
Date 3/26/12 & 3/27/12
VIRGINIA STANDARDS OF LEARNING OBJECTIVES
9.2 The student will produce, analyze, and evaluate auditory, visual, and written media
messages.
b) Determine the purpose of the media message and its effect on the audience.
d) Evaluate sources including advertisements, editorial, and feature stories for
relationships between intent and factual content.
LESSON OBJECTIVE
 Students will be able to understand the meaning of the word bias
 Students will be able to determine what constitutes a bias opinion
 Students will be able to decipher between the various types of bias
 Students will understand how bias opinions affect their research and their papers
TASK ANALYSIS
Do students know that bias is present in what they read about controversial topics? MAYBE (←
start here)
Do students know what the term bias means? MAYBE
Do students know that there are different types of bias? NO
Do students know that bias will be present in their own research papers? NO
KEY TERMS
Cognitive
Social
Research
Trait Ascription
Self-Serving
Actor-Observer
Social Desirability
Inclination
Unprejudiced
Deviation
Distortion
Interpretation
Perceptual
Illogical
Irrationality
Inaccurate
LEARNING RESOURCES
 Prezi on Bias definition, Bias types, and Bias examples
 Bias worksheets (2)
 Bias board
SEQUENCE OF THE LESSON
1. Before students go to the library for their research paper lesson on plagiarism, students
will be introduced to the word bias.
a. The word has proved to be difficult for numerous students to comprehend
throughout the research paper process.
2. The teacher will begin by addressing the need to fully go over the meaning of what bias
is and means. A Prezi will be introduced to the students, containing the definition for
bias, the three types of bias (cognitive, social, research) and their meanings, and then two
examples of biased websites (PETA and Voices for Animals.)
a. PETA represents a form of extreme biased feelings. Voices for Animals represent
a more subtle approach for biased feelings.
b. Students will be informed that because of their research papers being persuasive
essays, biased information will be present in their work. However, their biased
information will be based on research and facts as opposed to being based on
emotional thoughts and feelings.
3. After the Prezi, the teacher will display a board containing the definition for bias as well
as examples for the three types of bias. The teacher will explain briefly the examples for
bias given under each header.
a. Cognitive: gender (prejudice or discrimination based on gender), negative (humans pay
more attention to and give more weight to negative rather than positive experiences) , positive
outcome (people overestimate the probability of good things happening to them) , memory
(impairment or enhancement the recall of a memory)
b. Social: cultural (interpreting and judging phenomena by standards inherent to one's own
culture), trait ascription (people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of
c.
personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal
traits across different situations), self-serving (people attribute their successes to internal or
personal factors but attribute their failures to situational factors beyond their control) , actorobserver (a tendency to attribute one's own actions to external causes, while attributing other
people's behaviors to internal causes)
Research: subject (participant believes they know the purpose of the study and performs in a
way that will support or discredit your experiment.) , outcome (error made in evaluating the
quality of a decision when the outcome of that decision is already known) , information
(involving e.g. distorted evaluation of information), social desirability (tendency of
respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others)
DIFFERENTIATION
Kinesthetic: note taking on bias, homework worksheets about bias
Auditory: mini lesson lecture on bias
Visual: Prezi about bias, board about bias
Interpersonal: N/A
Intrapersonal: work alone on bias homework
Linguistic: N/A
CLOSURE
After the mini lesson on bias has been given, the teacher will pass out two worksheets to the
students. The worksheets pertain to understanding what bias is and how to identify bias. This
will be instructed to be homework for students to turn in the following class meeting. The
teacher will ask the students if they have any more questions about what bias means and how it
will be present in their research.