To introduce the Lord of the Flies unit that I taught during my long term sub position, I asked students to consider the age of responsibility, as responsibility is a common theme in the novel. I first asked students to think of a time when they were told that they could not do something because of their age and to reflect in a blog post about how that situation made them feel. Then students were given a list of responsibilities and privileges and asked to assign what they felt was an appropriate age to each. For example, one privilege students were given was getting a driver’s license. They then had to decide what the age at which one receives a driver’s license should be and explain why they selected that age. After all students had assigned each responsibility or privilege an age, we discussed the actual ages at which they were earned and whether the students felt that those ages were fair and/or realistic. This prompted lively discussions with both sections of classes that I taught this lesson to.
Student responses to both the blog prompt and the class discussion were well thought out and indicated to me that the students were engaged with the material. Considering I had never taught these students before this lesson, I was unsure how it would turn out and whether it would be successful or not, but by the amount of time spent discussing the age of responsibility, which actually carried over to the next class, I felt confident in my execution of the lesson plan. My goal with the lesson was to find a way to introduce one of the themes of the novel in a way that made it relevant and engaging to my students. By connecting it to their personal lives, my students felt that they could relate to the characters as we continued to discuss responsibility, ethics, and leadership throughout the course of the novel.
