Keys to Engaging Lesson Design and a New Lesson Plan Drop!

In their wonderful book 100% Engagement, Susan Barber and Brian Sztabnik begin by saying the following:

There is a myth that says engagement is the purview of young, fun, and modern teachers. They draw students in by building rapport around fashion, music, or sports. They turn everything into a Kahoot! or Quizlet so all facets of learning become gamified. They pluck the best samples from their future Rembrandts and Picassos and post them on Instagram, making everyone green with envy.

They then follow this up by saying this:

If you subscribe to this myth, engagement is all parts personality and no part perspiration.

The second I read this, I knew that I was going to love their book because while I use Kahoot (it is great for retrieval practice) and connect with students regularly over a sports team or album drop, Barber and Sztabnik point out something that has always bothered me about the education world. Often the go-to response for how to engage students is to bring in some tech, gamify or modernize our lessons, or otherwise add some flash.

And look, I am not against a bit of flash or fun. When we first discuss symbolism, I recite “The Raven” or “Sorrow Is Not My Name” from memory, and then we write absurdist stories that are stuffed with symbolism. For our Romeo and Juliet unit, I book out the theater so we can conduct class on the stage. 

That being said, to quote the Bard, all the glitters is not gold. And all that is new, techy, gamified, and modernized is not necessarily good or even engaging pedagogy.

When I look at my most engaging lessons, some include games or tech, but others do not. Some have theatrics or a distinctly modern feel, and others still do not. What they all include though are a suite of traits that Jon Eckert describes as the “Three Cs*” that are core to engagement in his book Just Teaching: Feedback, Engagement, and Well-Being for Each Student:

1. Content: The content is clear, contextualized, at the right level, and quality.
2. Collaboration: There are lots of moments of connection and opportunities for students to work together.
3. Creation: The students are able to use the knowledge and skills they learn to create new things and better do important tasks

What these Three ‘C’s share is that they all get to the core of what it means to be a human. For time immemorial our survival as a species has depended on us being picky and only encoding information that matters, working together, and engaging in constant creation and creativity. Is it any wonder that these same features would work well in our classrooms?

To see these features in action, here is my lesson where I introduce symbolism to my classes (click here for a downloadable copy).

Symbolism Lesson

Learning Objectives

• Students will understand what symbolism is
• Students will understand why and how authors/marketers/politicians/humans in general use symbols
• Students will be able to identify symbolism and use it effectively in their own writing

The Why

The world is full of symbolism. Pretty much every movie and show, book and short story, poem, commercial, and political stump speech is filled with symbolism. Symbolism can be seen in the logos of our favorite brands, our clothes, and the colors of our favorite sports teams (more teams wear red than any other color). It is why the new season of Stranger Things will be filled with creepy clocks. This lesson seeks to help students to recognize symbolism and its power, so they can use it in their writing, literary analysis, and wider analysis of the world.

The Intro

Begin by introducing what a symbol is (click here for symbolism slides you can make a copy of) :

A symbol is something that exists in a story or real life AND also represents something else. For example, the color red is an actual color, but it often can represent love, anger, passion, luck, blood, and dozens of other things.

Then follow this introduction with a key question for the students to discuss with a shoulder partner or small group:

What is the purpose of symbols?

Once students discuss the question in smaller groups, then have them discuss it as a whole group. It is generally good to let the students lead this conversation, as they tend to understand it better if they come to it themselves, but if they are struggling, the teacher can talk about how symbols are one of the most efficient and effective ways to add depth and meaning because they build upon a foundation of the associations and meanings we already carry with us.

Lesson Plan

1. Next, hand out the Symbolism Sheet (Click here for a Google Doc you can copy) and tell the students that a part of what makes symbols work is that we come with many meanings and associations to many things simply by being alive in the world. Then have the students write down meanings and associations they have for the symbols on the sheet with a shoulder partner/in small groups without looking anything up.
2. Once students get as far as they can in the sheet, discuss the associations and meanings of the symbols, both so students can learn common meanings for common symbols and see how the same symbol can have different meanings and associations for different people. The teacher can feel free to provide common meanings that are missed too.
3. The next step is to give the students a story or a poem that is rich with symbolism. I like “Sorrow Is Not My Name” by Ross Gay, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, or maybe “The Raven” for this November/December time of year. Of course, thousands of other stories/poems could work, so feel free to pick a favorite one that is completely packed with accessible, interesting symbolism.
4. Have the students read the poem/story and highlight or underline at least 7-10 potential symbols. They don’t need to provide meanings yet; instead they simply need to identify potential symbols.
5. At the end of the poem/story, have the students confer with their shoulder partner/group and come up with four really strong/interesting symbols to share with the class. Then have the groups share their symbols, with the teacher putting them all on the board. This stage isn’t about meaning yet. Instead the goal is to make a massive list of potential symbols.
6. Then discuss the following question as a class: What is the author trying to tell us about the story, characters, and message of the story by using those symbols? What emotions and associations are being called forth by using those symbols?
7. Lastly, have the students use their sheet of symbols to write the start to a poem or story that is rich (if not over the top) with symbolism. These will be shared and reveled in next time.

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This lesson doesn’t have any tech beyond pen, papers, and a poem/story. It doesn’t involve a new app, me standing on a desk, or include any K-Pop Demon Hunters or 6’7” jokes. And yet it is always such a joy to watch students grapple with content that matters (because the world really is stuffed with symbols) collaborate to build the ability together to unpack the meaning of symbols they encounter, and create their over-the-top symbolic stories.  

If you liked this lesson, I am so excited to offer it and six more of my most engaging, all-time favorite lessons on storytelling and story design for this month’s lesson drop. Specifically, the lessons cover symbolism, theme, metaphor/simile, details and imagery, story arc and design, characterization, and dialogue, and they are some of my core (and most engaging) lessons of the entire year. In each you’ll see the three ‘C’s at work and lots of the perspiration Barber and Sztabnik reference, so click here for more (and if cost is an issue, let me know, as I have some I can send out for free)!

Happy fall everyone, and look for a new post series starting next week with some new approaches to an old favorite: feedback and assessment. 

Yours in teaching,

Matt

*Eckert references a fourth ‘C’ in his book: Consolidation, or that students need to regularly review and retrieve information for them to gain the comfort and mastery needed to engage deeply. This fourth C is something I’ve talked about a lot, and although it didn’t fit with today’s post, it absolutely bears repeating as another engagement key.

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