George Washington High School
San Francisco, CA
Lesson 2: Of Mice and Men:
Documenting the Workplace
Type of Lesson
Introduction to elements of business and literature
Grade Level
High school juniors
Time Allotment
Ten 50-minute sessions Instructional Strategy Lecture, analysis,
individual composing, teamwork, following procedure in the creation
of a presentation product
Objectives
Overall Conceptual Objectives
To develop students' awareness of business structure
To teach students certain types of business communication
To teach students how to analyze fiction by analyzing and evaluating
character
To teach students about documentary and how to make pictorial
documentary
To teach vocabulary in context.
Performance Objectives
Students will be able to name and explain the different departments
of a business.
Students will be able to name and explain different job types
and how they are the same or similar in different businesses.
Students will be able to write simple business correspondence.
Students will be able to evaluate character based on a character's
remarks.
Students will be able to make simple presentations that document
the workplace.
Activities
American Literature
Activity 1:
Students read Of Mice and Men to the end of the boss's interrogation
of George and Lennie in Chapter 2.
Students will write a letter to Ready and Murray requesting two
workers. In order to do this, the teacher will introduce students
to the business letter in general and the business request letter
in specific. · The nine parts of the business letter are; letterhead,
dateline, salutation, body, closing, name and title, reference
initials, notation. · The body of a request letter has three parts;
the command, the details so that the request can be fulfilled,
and either a request for action or expression of appreciation
(Dostal and St. Vincent 287-88).
Activity 2:
Students complete vocabulary worksheet (link).
Activity 3:
Students finish chapter 2. The teacher has students list all
the duties of the boss and all of the farm jobs that have been
named so far (i.e., bucker, swamper, stable buck, boss). From
this list, students generalize about the different departments
of the farm: administration, accounting, human resources, purchasing,
marketing/distribution. The teacher explains to students that
as they read each book, they should now start to imagine that
they are each part of one of the farm's departments: the human
resources department. The teacher explains that a human resources
department hires, motivates, mediates and oversees laws and regulations
that affect the employee and employer. Assignment: Students write
a job description for each job listed on their worksheet (bucker,
swamper, stable buck, boss). They base the description of each
position on how the book describes the job and character who fills
it.
Computer Activities
Activity 1: Students develop their own letterhead for the farm.
After typing the letter, revising and editing, students learn
how to do mail merge, and send the letter to different employment
agencies.
Activity 2: The teacher explains that students, as part of a
business, need to learn business terminology. The teacher will
pass out the terminology sheet (attached). The teacher talks briefly
about memorization techniques: mnemonics, vocabulary flash cards,
essays, using terms in speech, putting them into practice, word
mapping. The teacher explains that Hyperstudio can create electronic
vocabulary flash cards.
Assignment: In work teams, students make a Hyperstudio presentation
of the terminology as well an organizational chart of the farm
as though it were any other company. Departments may include the
following: CEO, administration, marketing, accounting, human resources,
purchasing. Alternately, students may create a PowerPoint presentation.
Teams should be no larger than four students and students should
have no less than five cards to create each. The teacher then
introduces the human resources department functions by talking
about the central goal of motivating employees to give their best
performance. The different parts of motivation include the following:
safety, employee relations, training, recruitment, evaluation
and compensation . Students add this to the organizational chart.
Students should also include the characters in Of Mice and Men
and their job titles in the chart. If possible, the characters'
jobs should fall into the human resources category. For instance,
while the boss does recruitment and compensation, Slim handles
training and employee relations.
|
