Blogging about your own Utopia

Link to the lesson plan website: http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=942

I found this lesson to be extremely relevant for middle and high school students in language arts or English classes. The lesson blends together problem-based learning, technology integration, collaborative group work, reading comprehension, and application of learned material.
Prior to the lesson, students need to read literature that takes place in a utopian society. Many of my students read The Giver by Luis Lowry which is why this lesson really sparked my interest. The goal of the lesson is for students to create their own utopian society in groups. Students first brainstorm about characteristics of an ideal society and how it compares to the society we live in today. After a brief mini-lesson on blogging, students begin to blog about their society giving information about the rules of the society, daily activities, government, etc. Students also visit their peer’s blogs and comment on other developed utopias. The educational value of this lesson is extensive. Students are able to apply what they know from their reading to develop their own utopian society. Students work in groups to facilitate cooperative learning. Students post information about their societies through blogs and are also required to evaluate each other’s final products by responding to blogs.
I am definitely going use this lesson later on in the year when my students read The Giver. One change that I will make relates to how the students will write about their society. I think that students would benefit from taking on the role of a character in their society and writing the blog as if they were that character experiencing the daily routines of their world. This type of writing pushes students to think about the society as if they were actually living in it. For instance, instead of just listing the rules of the society, students would write about how the rules affect them on a day to day basis.
Prior to reading about this lesson, I thought that it would be difficult for students in my classes to blog about literature since so many of my students do not have an email account because their parents do not allow them to. However, since this lesson incorporates group collaboration, only one student in the group would need to sign up for the blog enabling the entire group to utilize this technological tool.