Lesson 1: What is a Policy Brief?
Use the following template to create your research lesson. The first page of the
template describes the purpose of the research lesson to the observers. The next
three pages provide a lesson-planning template that the teacher uses to teach the
lesson. The last page tells the lesson observers what the lesson design team wants
them to look for.
This research lesson should be given to the lesson observers in advance of the
lesson so they are better prepared for the observation.
LESSON BACKGROUND
Lesson Haley Sonenthal, Calla Jordan, Julia Friedberg
designers:
Instructor: Roosevelt Institute Campus Network (via Loft)
Date: TBD
School / 18-22 year old college students
Grade:
1. TITLE OF THE LESSON:
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Policy Analysis Part 1: What is a Policy Brief?
2. GOALS
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The goal of Lesson 1 is to familiarize students with the end product of a
policy brief.
By the end of the Lesson they should be able to explain the components of
writing a policy brief in their own words.
3. LESSON RATIONALE: Why we chose to focus on this topic and goals.
(For example, what is difficult about learning/teaching this topic? What
do we notice about students currently as mathematical learners?) Why we
designed the lesson as shown below.
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(a) We know our students are very interested in public policy and enacting
legislative change, however not all the students in the Roosevelt Campus
Network have undergraduate curricula exposure to the material. Students
might be passionate about policy, but they have different levels of
understanding and experience with writing briefs. We are striving to bridge
the gap between students and the resources that are available to them.
○ Specifically, this lesson serves as a starting point for students. They
need to understand what they will be creating before they begin to
create it. Once students have an idea of what they will need to write,
they will have a better idea of the writing style to use and the things
that they should be researching.
(b) We know that students have difficulty with the actual writing format and
style of the briefs. They have said that the most difficult part is taking all of
the research and writing a succinct brief.
(c) The major focus of the lesson will be the writing process for the policy
brief including format, language, style, etc. We hope to streamline this
process for the students so that their research and content can be clear and
well presented.
○ Lesson 1, specifically, is aimed towards orienting students with the
policy brief format and the necessary components.
(d) Our lesson will help students accomplish the objective by outlining an
explicitly clear, multi-staged process that all will follow.
○ We hypothesize that familiarizing students with policy briefs will help
them focus their research and writing processes
4. How does students’ understanding of this topic develop? How does this
lesson fit within a unit, or within students’ experiences in prior and
subsequent grades?
Students who write policy briefs are often interested in government and public
policy, but are not necessarily public policy majors. The Roosevelt Institute provides
students with resources, but they need to be streamlined and centralized so that
they are more accessible and easy to follow and use.
Students involved in Roosevelt at Northwestern have a one-hour orientation, but
most of what they learn comes from the writing process and from working with
older and more experienced students. They struggle with making their extensive
research more succinct in their writing, and they also struggle with keeping a
timeline so that they can remain on track.
5. Relationship of the lesson to standards
The lesson should outline the process for creating high caliber policy briefs to
increase the amount of qualified applications (and eventual winners) for the 10
Ideas competition.
Lesson 1:
Steps to Writing a Policy Brief: Session 1
LESSON TITLE: What is a Policy Brief?
INTRODUCTION: Give overview of lesson
-This lesson will focus on understanding the components of a policy brief.
Students will have the opportunity to review a few examples of excellent
policy briefs so that they know what they will be trying to create as an end
deliverable. Using examples will also help direct students to know the type of
research that they must conduct and they type of writing style that they will
be using.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: By the end of the session participants will be able to
-Identify all key components of a policy brief (background, analysis,
recommendations, key take away, quick facts, next steps, and citations)
-Analyze commonalities that exemplary briefs share within each key
component.
-Note the writing style of a policy brief (This objective will be demonstrated
in a later lesson when students have the chance to write their own brief.)
-Draw inferences about what key questions they can pull from exemplary
policy briefs in order to begin researching and writing their own briefs.
-Be able to answer the following questions:
How could this have been a stronger brief?
Are there any unanswered questions from the brief?
MATERIALS
-Loft [replacement of Dropbox]
-Scribed link for previous Big 10 Ideas Briefs
PREPARATION
-Students will not need to prepare extensively seeing as this lesson serves as
a starting point.
Lesson:
1)
Go to the Scribed Link for the Big 10 Ideas Competition (link is on the Loft)
2)
Select a publication category that you are interested (education,
environment, etc)
3)
Select 2 briefs to use as examples. (Feel free to look at others, but look at
two as a minimum.)
4)
Read the title and aim statement:
How effective is the title and aim statement in getting you to read the policy?
5)
Read the background section:
Please identify the issue, key stakeholders, and history?
6)
Read the analysis section
How does the writer support his/her argument?
7)
Read the next steps section
What is the proposed solution?
What are issues with the proposed solution and how does the writer
overcome these issues?
8)
Read the key facts and talking points?
How do these sections add value to the brief?
Are there any unanswered questions from reading the full brief?
9)
Repeat steps 4-8 with two other briefs
Which brief appeared stronger and why?
7. Data collection points during the lesson observation.
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Our team will collect data on:
○ Whether the respondent indicated he/she learned something new
○ Whether the respondent was able to adequately answer all of the
questions
○ Whether the respondent feels prepared to move on to the research
stage of the process
○ Would they recommend this background preparation to a fellow
Roosevelt student
Outside observers are asked to collect data on:
○ Expressions of confusion or satisfaction
○ Conversations between students (topics; subject matter; questions
they ask)