Introduction
"ESL programs are the fastest growing component of the state-administered
adult education programs. In 1997-98, 48% of enrollments were in ESL
programs, compared to 33% in 1993-94. Of these 48% enrollees, 32% were
in beginning ESL classes, 12% in intermediate, and 4% in advanced."
(See the ESL fact
sheet from the National Institute for Literacy as wll as the LINCs
ESL Special Collection for
numerous informative resources)
The field of adult education is chronically underfunded and understaffed,
particularly in the area of ESL/Civics professional development. As with
most adult education professionals, ESL/Civics teachers rely primarily
on inservice professional development to better their teaching skills
and knowledge. This webquest is an inservice professional development
tool.
The goal of the webquest is to be a useful inquiry model to help ESL/Civics
teachers expand their professional expertise and knowledge, and teach
their adult learners about the Bill of Rights in partial preparation for
the INS citizenship test. After completing the webquest, you will not
only have much more Bill of Rights knowledge and many more resources at
your fingertips, but you will also have several lesson plans to share
and utilize directly in your classrooms.
The webquest balances the immediate need to "teach
to the test" with the long-term need to broaden the new citizens'
knowledge of the history and culture of the United States and should take
about 15 hours over 3 weeks.
Objectives/Task
The following objectives will be met by completing this webquest:
- Gain a better understanding of the Bill of Rights in its historical
context
- Explore online resources that can be used for professional development
in ESL/Civics and for creating engaging lesson plans for adult learners
that relate to the Bill of Rights
- Develop classroom strategies that make the Bill of Rights more meaningful
to adult ESL/Civics learners
- Help prepare adult ESL/Civis learners to pass their INS citizenship
tests and to understand the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
- Develop several lesson plans to share regarding different aspects
of the Bill of Rights that are suitable for different levels of ESL/Civics
adult learners
Process
 1.
Gather together a group of 3-5 ESL/Civics teachers to do this activity.
You can all be in the same program, or you can be in several programs
and do the collaborative webquest activities via email. See the
online how-to for some helpful tips.
2.
Discuss within the group whether any of you have already taught the Bill
of Rights and what your experiences were.
- How did you teach your adult learners about the Bill of Rights and
individual freedoms in Amerca?
- How many class periods did you devote to these topics?
- What activities did you have your adult learners do and how did you
prepare them for the activities?
- How did your learners respond?
- Did they feel that they had been prepared for the INS citizenship
test by these lessons?
- How did you tie in the historical concepts of the Bill of Rights with
individual freedoms in the United States today?
- What you would do to improve on your past teaching of the subject?
3.
Share your lesson plans if you have any to help in the discussion. If
none of you have taught the Bill of Rights or if none of you have had
much experience with the subject, you can look at sample
activities/lesson plans here. There are numerous lesson plans listed
on this resource page, but it would be most helpful to think through a
lot of the above questions first before browsing through the online plans.
Then each chose a source and some lesson plans to review. After reviewing,
you should come back together and share the information. Since most of
these lesson plans are for 6-12 grades, discuss how to modify them for
your particular adult population.
4.
Think about what makes an effective lesson on the Bill of Rights. Brainstorm
some ideas, objectives, and strategies that seem crucial. Make an Evaluation
List of these peer-generated criteria and then use that list as your
"rubric" for evaluating the lessesons plans that you will be
individually developing for your lessons.
5.
Make a Srategies/Activities List of the effective classroom strategies
and activities that you used to teach about the Bill of Rights and brainstorm
several additional ones that you didn't yet personally try in your classrooms.
(You might want to browse through the lesson
plan resources again or look at any notes that you took earlier when
browsing through them.) Discuss what makes an activity particularly engaging
for your adult learners.
6.
Review the selected online documents and sources concerning the
Bill of Rights and its origins. Each of you can choose 1 or 2 of the
sources, depending on the group size, and then you should report back
to the group about the information. Good resource evaluation questions
would include:
7.
Choose a particular amendment or freedom that you think will interest
the adult learners that you see in your program's classes. (The types
of learners will vary from program ot program. Ideally each of you will
choose a different amendment or freedom.) Look through the resources listed
here that deal with individual amendments
or freedoms. Some of the resources list all of the amendments with
notes and historical comments and some of them go into great detail about
single amendments, like the First Amendment.
8.
Design a lesson plan around your particular amendment or freedom. Don't
forget to clarify your learning abjectives, materials needed, instructional
strategies, and assessment methods. You can again review many of the lessons
on the lesson plan resources
page, make use of your previously created General Resources Chart
on the resources that you all reviewed and shared, and utilize some of
the information that you discussed in the Strategies/Activities List
that you worked on earlier. Make sure that the lesson plans are at a suitable
level for your particular adult ESL/Civics learners.
9.
Review and evaluate the lesson plans as discussed in the Evaluation section
below. Revise your lesson plans, share them with all, and try them out!
Evaluation
Each of you will have designed a lesson plan on
a different amendment or freedom. After writing a short paragraph explaining
the learner context for your lesson, exchange lesson plans with other
teachers in the group and do a peer review utilizing the Evaluation
List that you created earlier in this webquest. Make sure that all
of the lesson plans satisfy the requirements for the following:
- higher level thinking skills
- collaborative/cooperative learning
- sound academic content/knowledge
- engaging, relevant content
- clear, understandable objectives and assessments
that match the needs of the adult ESL/Civics learners
Have a group discussion regarding the lesson plans and how they measure
up to your Evaluation List and the requirements listed above. Make
constructive comments on how to improve all of the lesson plans, do revisions,
and then share them with the other members of the group.
Conclusion
The most logical conclusion for this webquest is for each of the teachers
to try out the lessons with his or her adult ESL/Civics learners and then
come back together, physically or via email, and discuss what seemed to
work, what didn't, and why. In this way, all benefit from the strong dose
of reality that comes from actually having delivered a lesson to a class
of ault ESL/Civics learners.
Some additional thoughts:
- Think of some leading questions that would help tie in the Bill of
Rights lessons with the learners' home countries, current events, and
personal experiences.
- There are currently several TV series that deal with the Supreme Court
the White House, and individual freedoms are often dramatized in them.
They make good "projects" for learners to see and discuss
as a group.
- Newspapers from all over the world can be accessed online and explored
to articles relate to individual freedoms and rights. These can be fruitful
sources of discussion with adult learners from many different countries.
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