http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/Social_Studies/Civics/CIV0007.html

Alicia Zimmerman

Due Process-Search and Seizure Lesson Plan

Jean Piaget believes that a child begins the formal operational stage around the age of eleven. The grade level of the students that this lesson plan is written for is 11^th and 12^th graders, or seventeen and eighteen year olds. These students are well into the formal operational stage but their minds are still developing into those of adults. The activity that was shown in this lesson plan is an example of how a child or student can think about potential situations that could hypothetically happen, thus acting in a formal operational way. The teacher, using different aspects of learning such as constructivism, active learning, and elaborative rehearsal showed a clear understanding of how children learn and thus created a lesson plan that was consistent with research done on learning and development.

Lev Vygotsky believed that intellectual development is only understood in historical and cultural context when children experience it. The search at the beginning of class illustrates this concept by having the students experience an illegal search without knowing that it was set up beforehand. This helps the students not be so distanced from the actual case by bringing personal meaning to it. It not only makes sense in a historical context but also in context to the students’ own worlds and their own experiences.

The search is also an example of active learning. Both Piaget and Vygotsky believed that students learn well when they are actively learning. In this example the students saw role playing done by the student at the beginning of class and it was meaningful to them because they watched it happen and most likely would all have different feelings about it. Active learning was also shown in the lesson when the students were interacting with others during their group work and creating dramatizations of the case. This helps the students to put the lesson into their own words and teach it to someone else while doing that. The students were working together to help teach the class more about the case. This helps to develop schemas because the students are taking ideas from the lesson and working to understand new concepts such as due process. This was hands on experience for the students and made them think beyond the concrete to the hypothetical when thinking about the different cases that could possibly happen to somebody. This further shows that they are in the formal operational stage when interacting with one another because they can think beyond just the information given to them. The students were engaged with one another when discussing the case during class.

When listing reasons on the board, or making guesses about how the Supreme Court ruled, the students were diving into deep thought, staying engaged with one another, and promoting elaborative rehearsal. By attaching personal meaning to the case through the activity at the start, the students have an image stored in their brain by which to remember the process by. Personal meaning is attached by the students putting themselves in one another’s shoes as they watched the search play out in front of them. When a situation is viewed by many people, each person is likely to have different feelings and opinions about what went on. When they go back to think about the New Jersey vs. T.L.O. case, they will have the image of their teacher searching the student’s purse in their minds and that will be a cue to help bring about the memory of the class discussion and the ruling of the case. The brain likes examples such as their teacher searching the student’s purse and sending the student to the office with the whole class watching. Examples that involve interaction with other people are easier to retrieve at a later time because of their use of imagery.

Personal meaning is also shown through the students wondering what it would be like if it were them who were being searched. The students might also associate what they saw in the classroom with other situations they have previously been involved in or seen happen such as police searches or even their parents searching their bedrooms and personal belongings. Imagery and visual learning are effective because the brain can create a lasting memory of what it saw and create associations in the students’ brains to help recall the lesson at a later time. This in itself is a prime example of the information processing theory at work.

In addition to elaborative rehearsal, this lesson plan also puts an emphasis on inductive learning. The students first are shown an example of an illegal search and then are asked to come up with the reasons why a search is legal or not. They are also to come up with how they think the Supreme Court would have ruled and why. This follows along with the idea of constructivist learning. The teacher in this lesson plan most likely taught it this way so his students would be more likely to remember it for a longer period of time than if he had taught them by deductive learning, or just telling them how the case played out. Making them figure out the ruling of the case helps the students to identify and create their own meaning out of the information. Having the students discuss the case and share their feelings about it also pushes them towards creating their own meaning and interpretations.

In the third part of this lesson plan, the students work together in groups to write a dramatization of the case. Modeling is being portrayed during the part of the lesson towards the other students in their groups, and towards the whole class when presenting at the end. This type of modeling is a good example because the students are giving each other feedback on what they think about the concepts, and they have a chance at the end of the class to explain it to the rest of their peers thus being able to teach it to others creating a better understanding of the material for the person presenting. This form of presenting pushes every student in the group to understand the concepts completely.

Having groups also helps the students because they will learn teamwork, and how to collaborate together to come up with one answer or in this case a dramatization, that they will be sharing with the rest of their peers. This type of learning represents a model of a ‘good student’. The activity helps the students to develop critical thinking skills while reaching rational decisions about what to believe. They are reinterpreting the information they received and the experience they witnessed for themselves. This idea also is an example of constructivism because the students are applying what they learned from the lesson to a new problem or a new case. The students must work to transform the information from the case they were taught to a case that they make up, thus having to each individually play a role in creating the new case. Presenting the dramatization makes each of the students understand the information for themselves because they have to stand up and act it out.

As well as constructivism, the group work is also productive because the students are working within what Vygotsky calls their zone of proximal development. They have not yet mastered the concept of due process but it is not something that they are incapable of learning. With the assistance of their peers and guidance from their teacher, they will understand the concept of due process in no time. In the meantime it forces them to use higher and more advanced thinking then they are used to.

Overall, this lesson plan engages several different aspects of learning and development. Active learning is present throughout the whole lesson; elaborative rehearsal, and modeling are shown within the group work and visuals, all which is consistent with what Piaget and Vygotsky say is good about learning. The information processing theory and the constructivist theory are both present in how the information was presented to the class. Overall, because this lesson plan follows many of the theories and other aspects of learning, it is consistent with research on learning and development.