Meghan McCafferty

February 28, 2011

PSY 205: Educational Psychology

Lesson Plan Analysis I

Educational Psychology Concepts

When analyzing the persuasive writing lesson plan, Can You Convince Me? Developing Persuasive Writing, there are several psychological concepts that are apparent. The first part of the lesson deals with a game that the students play. The class is divided into teams of four or five, and the prize for the winning team promotes enthusiasm and competitiveness (e.g. extra time at recess, a chance to be first in the lunch line, a snack, etc.). This is an example of operant conditioning because as the students work on being persuasive through playing this game they are motivated by the possibility of receiving a positive reinforcement. In other words, the students are rewarded with a prize to increase their persuasive argument skills.

This game can be very effective in engaging the students through activating their prior knowledge and discovering what they already know about persuasive arguments. During the game, the students are illustrating another concept that deals with information processing. The students are attaching associations, or making connections, between their past experiences and the new persuasive writing skills that they will learn. The use of sticky notes, to have students categorize their opinions (for or against) on a chart in the classroom, further supports elaborative rehearsal by helping organize the students thought processes and enabling them to visualize and store in their memory. Another example of how students can attach associations is through the ‘Home/School Connection’ at the end of session 1. The lesson asks students to find an example of a persuasive piece from the newspaper, television, radio, magazine, or billboards , and present their examples in class the following day. In doing this, the students are able to make visual associations with real-life examples of persuasive arguments. This connection to real life examples can provide more context to the concept of developing persuasive arguments and help the students begin to establish meaning or understanding as to why this is important. Ultimately, it will ensure better long term memory of this important skill.

During the second session in this lesson plan the students share their real-life examples of persuasive writing in class. Students are then asked to examine their arguments made during session I. These discussions take place as a class or in small groups, thus allowing peer interaction to further influence the learning process. Peers can serve as effective models because students can easily relate to someone of their own age, background and communication style. Some students will most likely not have perfect examples of persuasive arguments right out of the gate. This can prove to be beneficial to the learning process, because as students observe their peers struggle with finding examples, but ultimately achieve success, then they are encouraged to make attempts themselves. This method of learning can significantly increase the self-efficacy of all the students. The practice of using coping models is another form of modeling that can help students better understand the concept of persuasive articles through social construction.

Another part of this lesson plan that illustrates a psychological concept can be found in the middle of the second session during the PowerPoint presentation. Our brains love to organize information and to make sense of the world we live in. By passing out the Persuasive Strategy Definitions handout, and then showing the students a clearly organized PowerPoint presentation, the teacher is helping the students to effectively categorize/organize the information into their schemata. This increases the chance for the students to send this new information into their long-term memory.

A fifth concept that can be found in this lesson is also in the second session. Here, the teacher has each student write down the definition of each persuasive strategy on their Persuasive Strategy Definitions handout. In doing this, the students are attaching meaning through paraphrasing the definition. When a student takes notes by putting newly learned information into their own words, they first have to make sense of it, which helps them to store this information in their long-term memory. This is one of the forms of elaboration and will help the students recall specific information at a later time.

Social construction is another reason why this lesson plan proves to be both effective and consistent with the research on human development and learning. Cooperative learning can be found in the third session called Persuasive Writing. The class is divided into groups of two, or three, students and each group discusses the persuasive strategies that they found in their real-life persuasive piece. This instructional strategy of cooperative learning illustrates Vygotsky’s belief that social interaction is critical to growth and development. Each group then presents the information they discussed to the class with the hopes of showing the class a different perspective, and understanding, of the assignment. Students will learn that there are many different ways to construct an argument. The teacher serves as a guide by asking appropriate questions and encouraging students to use a variety of persuasive strategies.

A seventh concept can be located toward the end of the third session. Students are given an interactive Persuasion Map, which acts like an advance organizer. This graphic organizer provides a prewriting exercise, and it is intended to help students map out their arguments for a persuasive essay. This effectively enables the students to learn the material because it connects the information they do know (a variety of persuasive arguments) to new information (writing a persuasive essay). Activating prior knowledge is a key approach to introducing new concepts to students and makes transitioning to learning new knowledge smoother.

The last concept that makes this lesson plan effective is found in the fourth session. One of the similarities between Piaget and Vygotsky was the belief in interactions with the environment when learning. As partners of students present their written arguments to the class, the audience uses Check the Strategy sheets to evaluate their classmates’ presentations. The students became actively involved in their environment through the process of analyzing, presenting, and evaluating, persuasive arguments. This interaction with the environment can be expanded through the use of an extension activity, like a field trip or in-class educational movie, where the students could write persuasive arguments associated with the activity that they participated in. The students can then make connections between their classroom and the surrounding environment. These associates to real life situations deepen the students overall knowledge, learning, memory and their ability to apply these skills outside of the classroom.

In conclusion, this lesson plan proves to be very effective. From using a variety of educational, and psychological, strategies to engage the students and encourage them to apply the skills they have acquired to real life. Having students choose the types of arguments they want to make, and having the students participate in fun activities, helps them to make a long-term connection to the concepts. When the students worked in cooperative groups this furthered their understanding of a persuasive argument by working together to construct meaning. Overall, this multi-day lesson plan incorporates real-life skills into the learning of new information and helps the students become aware that they know a lot more about writing than they thought they did.

Source

Manning, E., (2011). Can you convince me? Developing persuasive writing.

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