Lesson Plan

Choose Your Own Bias Adventure

Grade Level: 6-12

Length: 60+ minutes

DE Domain: CB

  • Decision-Making Traps
  • Career Education
  • Language Arts

Students will:

  • Apply knowledge of bias
  • Practice writing skills such as planning, revising, & editing text

Understanding types of bias helps us identify when we are being trapped by our subconscious. Increased awareness helps us make better decisions.

  • Language Arts: aside from the obvious connections…consider inviting students to write a choose your own adventure based on a novel or well known story
  • Science: invite students to use their story to explore a scientific inquiry process or the ethical issues related to new discoveries and technologies.
  • Social Studies: invite students to place their story in a historical setting, or wherein the protagonist must deal with a variety of landscapes.
  • Math: use the story writing to explore a concept – i.e.someone learning or using the concept.

DECISION MAKER MOVES: Thinking beyond the pros & cons list

Main Lesson Flow

  1. Introduce students to the choose-your-own-adventure structure by working through an example.
  2. In pairs, students create their own choose-your-own-adventure story featuring types of bias they’ve learned in prior lessons.
  3. Students share their work with peers.

Introduction:

Display the Dragon Quest story to introduce students to how a choose-your-own-adventure story works. Read the story aloud and allow students to choose when choices arise (depending on the choices made, this may end very quickly or take a while).

Main Event

  1. Put students into pairs (they could work individually if they want a challenge) and introduce the task to the students: they will be writing their own choose-your-own-adventure stories that include examples of bias as the traps that end the story.
  2. Show the class the sample story, drawing the students’ attention to how bias is presented and the structure of the story.
  3. Give each pair (or individual) a copy of the planning sheet and give them time to brainstorm and plan their story. Check in with students throughout this process to ensure they understand the structure and how to organize their story.
  4. Option: engage in some peer review with their rough drafts. Have each pair invite another pair to read their story while the authouring pair observes making note of any sticky points or trouble spots they want to adjust for the final draft.

Closure

There are many ways students could share their story:

  1. Display the choose-your-own-adventures on a bookshelf or bulletin board so students can peruse them on their own time
  2. Dedicate a period of class time for students to read each other’s stories
  3. Get together with another class to share the stories. See if they can escape bias traps!

Differentiation:

  • The writing component can be completed on paper (suggest one “step” per page for easy organization) or on a word processor.
  • Depending on students’ comfort with the choose-your-own-adventure format, it may be beneficial to work through an example as a class.
  • Suggest that students use a given number of biases, not all nine.

Optional extensions:

Success Criteria:

  • Students can identify the bias they escape with their choices – or, on
    reflection, which bias they fell victim to.
  • Optional: include some writing criteria re dialogue or paragraphing or sentence structure, etc.

Stay informed and join our mailing list