Positive psychology meets K-12 pedagogy. This course explores key ideas of positive psychology and shows how great teachers apply those lessons to maximize student engagement and accomplishment. Through lectures, discussions, interviews and footage of great educators in action, you’ll learn how to integrate character-based objectives into your own teaching.
Dual Purpose
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From the course by Relay Graduate School of Education
Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms
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From the lesson
Macro Structures
Create a plan for teaching character and then work every day to make it happen.
Meet the Instructors
Dave LevinCo-Founder, KIPP; Co-Founder, Relay GSE
Let's pay special attention to another macro structure near and
dear to my heart, which is the dual purpose lesson.
A dual purpose lesson means any lesson that is explicitly
planned to tackle both an academic and a character aim.
Let's look at an example that was filmed in Kim's class on
February 13th and as you're about to see that date matters a lot
>> Tomorrow
is both February 14th and Valentine's Day and so there's, there's
lots of things to be thinking about this week including love.
So on the one hand, William, we're going to
be working on the academic task of writing.
But on the other hand, we're going to take
this opportunity this week to swim in some love.
Alright?
And [LAUGH]
The way that we're going to do that, is
that, this week, we'll be writing letters that
express our love, respect, admiration, for
someone that you already thought about in our write away, alright?
>> Tackling the character strength of love in a seventh grade class?
Yeah, see, that takes its own character strength.
Li-, that takes bravery.
So they're working on their writing skills and demonstrating love.
Dual objectives. Explicitly dual purpose.
But not all dual purpose lessons have such an explicit character aim.
In some classes, the character tie-in is more subtle
or even more of a shadow aim, where you
plan activities that ask students to demonstrate the character's
strength or skill, even if the strength isn't explicitly named.
Let me show you another example.
Mike's students are reading a book in pairs and trying to
define the word constable. Using only context clues.
>> Constable, what's a constable?
>> We only check, we said it was kind of like an assistant.
>> An assistant?
Okay.
Okay. What made you say that?
>> Because, it said, he was fat and he was asleep.
So we knew it was a person. >> Mm-hm.
>> And then And we kept reading on to find
more kinds of clues, and he said, he and the man in
the yellow suit, so we were like, oh, so he must be his,
>> His assistant?
>> His assistant, yeah.
>> Okay, I want you to keep reading and
check the definition, because sometimes when you see a new
word like that, and it keeps getting used over
and over again, you'll get more context as you go.
Okay.
>> The, the man in the yellow suit sighed.
But of course I had to find out where they were taking her.
Carrying a shotgun, may be a spy,
asking a lot of suspicious questions.
>> Well, I think that's like his, like, a
guard or something now, because Yeah, maybe a guard.
>> Because why would you be carrying a shotgun?
>> It seems like he's trying to figure things out.
>> Yeah, yeah. >> Right?
So the question is, is it possible that constable is a name for someone,
that, that, that maybe we're not used to seeing that name used for.
But someone who, who May actually have a job even in our own, you
know, we get people who do what this, this guy does in our city.
We just have to keep looking for clues as to what he's doing.
To figure out who he is and what a constable actually is, okay?
If you keep reading and you keep seeing what
he's doing I think you'll start to figure it out.
>> Mike checks in, asks a few pointed
questions but mostly he leaves the students alone.
They need to work independently with focus to
figure this one out and eventually they do.
It's a really cool clip.
>> It's something new for these parts.
The kidnapping. Never had a case like this before.
>> Okay he's a police.
>> I knew [CROSSTALK] >> He's a detective.
>> Oh yeah.
>> He's a detective.
>> Because he said, never had a case like this.
Like this,
[UNKNOWN] ohhh, I think he's a guard.
>> I've never had a case like this that I've known
of, and I've been in charge of this for 50 years.
So now we know he's a detective.
>> So he's a cop? >> No he's a detective.
>> A detective.
. Oh, okay, sorry.
>> Well, we don't know yet. >> A detective working with a yellow.
. Never had a case like this.
>> Ohh,
so more context, okay interesting.
>> Mike doesn't stop there, here's the class at the end of the period.
>> How many of you guys did you notice that you
had to read a lot sometimes to figure out a word.
It wasn't usually enough to just read the sentence sometimes you had
to read back awhile, and sometimes you had to read ahead awhile.
Yeah, it's really common to do that, and it's very normal.
I'm very impressed with the amount of grit you guys
showed, though. It was a really tricky activity.
>> It's simply great that Mike brings it back to
the character strength, and explicitly ties grit to the character behavior.
If we have time for a deeper discussion with kids.
It's probably even more effective to get the
students to name that behavior on their own.
Regularly incorporating dual purpose lessons into
our instruction is a macro structure.
We'll see dual purpose lessons in action in our final two case studies.
Miss teaches 12th grade A.P. U.S. history. Jessica and Patrick teaches 5th grade.
Jess and Patrick's first lesson comes from
Language Arts, and their second comes from Math.
Please pick the case study that most closely aligns
to your experience or interest, or ideally watch them both.
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