Lessons on Writing about Our Neighborhood Part II

Index: Lesson 1 |Lesson 2| Lesson 3| Lesson 4 | Lesson 5 |Lesson 6

Lesson 1

Aim: How many types of attitude toward work are presented in the History of work ethic?

Do now: Journal Writing

What is your attitude toward work? Where do you think you have acquired such an attitude?

Procedures:

1. Share our journals.
2. Read the history of work ethic. Take notes as you are reading to prepare to discuss the attitudes toward work mentioned in the article.
3. How was each different attitude formed originally?
4. Create a chart to indicate the differences in attitudes toward work represented by various time periods or groups of people.
5. You can also create a timeline for such changes or transitions of different attitudes.
6. What is a timeline? View this site to get an idea.
7. Discuss the features of a timeline( succinct, sequential, straight forward , using bullets, avoiding long-paragraph description, using phrases instead of long sentences, time span of each era, including important information   each period, using various colors to indicate each period, etc)

Evaluation:

The chart or the timeline  you create should fully demonstrate your understanding of the history of work ethic.

Lesson Two: Lesson on the Art project

Lesson Three: Research on the Work Ethic of My Neighborhood or  My Family

Objectives: To discover the work Ethic of the student's neighborhood or family through research and interviews

Motivation:

1. To take students on a trip to the City Museum of New York to gather some information about the history of New York

2. To take a virtual trip to  the Museum of the City of New York .

Procedures:

Part I

1. Let's write a paragraph describing our understanding of work ethic according to the article The History of Work Ethic.
2. Share our ideas on Work Ethic using the Discussion Forum and we will list the most important ones on the blackboard for everyone to copy down. We will need the notes to generate our interview questions.

Some of the elicited ideas:

1. Attitude toward work

• views on education
• salary/something else more important
• care about benefits such as health insurance or retirement plan
• Skills must be used
• sacrifice
• punishment
• challenge
• proof of talents/skills
  
  Motivations
• money
• self-knowledge
• social status (recognition)
• self-expression
• challenge
• personal growth

Anticipation: hard work will be the foundation for success or the opposite

Work Nature :

• Mobility
• Stability
• autonomy
• high discretion
• decision-making
• help others
• emphasize skills
• problem-solving
• have leadership opportunities
• work with people/machines
  
  
  Attitude toward women in the work force
  
  Attitude toward the age of people who should work
  
  Attitude toward working with people of other races rather your own
  
  Beliefs in making a living
• financial investment
• hard work
• savings
• taking chances
• using any means only selected means
  

Preference of work area:in the city, suburb

Preference of Work Fields:
industry, business, agriculture, education, scientific research, entertainment

Personal Benefits

enjoyment, pride, fulfillment, personal challenge

Attitude toward supervision and team work

Part II

1. We will create 15-20 questions to interview at least three people from three different generations in your family or three business people from three different businesses in your neighborhood.

2. Based on our notes on work ethic, prepare 7-8  interview questions now in the class. We'll share our questions to see how we can ask questions effectively.

3. These are the things to avoid when preparing interview questions- questions that only require a Yes or No answer; blunt questions; questions that contain jargons; questions that are too complex that interviewees have to take time to think about them.

4. Try to answer the questions yourself after you finish. Do your questions make people open up to you and give you a lot of information?

5. Work in pairs and interview each other with the questions you have prepared. If your partner has difficulty understanding your questions, rephrase them or clarify them.

6. About the Interview- You could prepare a questionnaire and mail it to your relatives to avoid time consuming interviews or making the appointments. But the choice is yours.

7. Write a written based on your interviews( Use New York Times Web site to learn the strategies of tuning interviews into a written report).

Part III

*In your written report on the research of the work ethic of your family or neighborhood, you must include the following-----

1. Time line of the history of work ethic
2. 15-20 interview questions
3. Interview report( you notes from interviews, names of the interviewees their relationship to you)
4. The final report
5. Reflections on completing the research

Part IV

Due date for the Research Report in April 17, 2000( Monday). The files must be typed and saved on a disc or the hard drive of  your computer so we can upload them onto our web site.

Lesson 4

Objectives: To publish our final work on our web sites in Angelfire.com

Procedures:

1. Visit the web site to read the instructions for using page composer to create files.

2. Create a table of contents page for you Work Ethic Project and then add an index of Work Ethic Project on you Index page.(Homepage) and make a link to it.

2. To read the instructions for publishing your work on Angelfire.com, go to this web site

Lesson 5

Objectives: Students will write two creative pieces about their neighborhood based on their research on the work ethic of their families or neighborhoods

Motivation:

Read a poem or a story on work ethic . What are some of the striking features of the writing?

Procedures:

1. Brainstorm the ideas that you would like to write about. Make a list of them.
2. Do a lop writing activity. Select one of the most interesting ideas from the list and write freely about it for 5 minutes without worrying about grammar or whether you will use the ideas later.
3. Select the next important idea to write about freely.
4. Your writing should be related to the subject of work ethic.
5. Make sure to include some anecdotes in your report to make it sound more interesting.

Lesson 6

Aim: How to write creatively about the changes in your neighborhood?

Procedures:

1. What images come to your mind when you hear the phrase" change in your neighborhood"? Make a list of such image using words and phrases not sentences.
2. Go over the list and circle three items that represent the most outstanding changes.
3. Write freely about each circled "change". Let your thoughts flow first before you pay attention to grammar and other technical parts of writing. Write about a full page of anything that seems to be connected to the image-stories, anecdotes, people, feelings, voices you hear, etc. At this point, your writing does not have to make any sense, but the "threads" in your free writing may lead to other more interesting or more significant thoughts, and you will start from there. Or maybe there is nothing you would like to use from this loop writing but something else comes to your mind. Then throw away all the previous thoughts and start fresh.
4. You must do the "loop writing" before you get started composing for the work you would like to hand in to represent you.
5. Include stories in you writing. Don't tell, show.
6. Don't always tell stories using your voice. You could adopt other voices (the character's voice, your mother's voice, your neighbor's voice, a drug dealer's voice, a retired person's voice, etc).
7. You can create a scene using dialogues among characters, or write a diary from your character's point of view. Of course, you can write a poem or a story, or any other form you would like to use, such as a news article to be submitted to the New York Times.
8. Any writing should be full of passion. If you don't feel like writing about a subject, drop it and change to another one until you feel passionate about what you are writing.