Lesson Plan

Policy Decisions: Cell Phone Use at School – Lesson #1

Grade Level: 6-12

Length: 60+ minutes

DE Domain: VAR

  • Students will discover how technology influences behavior and decisions, individually and as a society.
  • Students will identify how their behaviors and values change in their 24-hour experiment with their cell phones.

This lesson guides students to reflect on their usage of technology and social media to establish context for creating a school cell phone policy.

VAR.1 – Embrace decisions as opportunities

What to look and listen for:

  • Are students able to share and discuss their perspectives on technology an social media?
  • Do students demonstrate self-awareness in their usage of technology and social media?

Lesson:

Engage (10-15 minutes):

To open the unit, lead your students in a guided discussion about technology and its impact on our society.

 

Suggested Journaling Prompt:

  • How is our society benefiting or not benefiting from technology?
  • What factors do you think inform technology policies?
  • Do you think society has changed because of technology? If so, how?
  • Do you think you’ve changed because of technology? If so, how?

 

Apply (Length of movie: 1 hour 34 minutes):

Play the movie “The Social Dilemma” (2020). As your students watch the film, stop at certain moments to give your students time to jot down their thoughts, to develop their thinking about technology and its impact on our society.

 

Reflect (10-15 minutes):

As the movie ends, facilitate a discussion about the students’ thoughts and opinions on the technology, social media, and behaviors surrounding them.

Suggested Questions:

  • What does your phone usage reveal about how you spend your time/attention?
  • What surprised you?
  • Given your personal goals and what your definitions of success requires of you, how do you perceive your relationship with your phone?

 

Introduce a 24-hour experiment to your students to notice how their productivity, well-being, decisions, and time management changes when their cell phone behavior changes.

For the next 24 hours, make the following adjustments to your phone:

  • Place them in Gray-scale mode.
  • Turn off notifications.
  • Move “problem” apps into a single folder, not on the home screen (a problem app would be an app that students spend more time on that they want to/feel good about).
  • Deactivate face-id/create manual passcode.

 

Differentiation:

Pose guiding questions during the film to prompt student thinking.

Create questionnaires so that students can track their thoughts.

Provide subtitles for the film.

Highlight any relevant vocabulary words to be reviewed depending on your students’ knowledge

Optional extensions:

Provide book or article recommendations to students interested in learning more about the effects of technology.

Stay informed and join our mailing list