Defined by society?
Peter Johnson

Overview
 This is your basic society creating time with a twist of looking at it analytically after reading a book that should challenge some of the preconceptions of developing a society. This assignment would be appropriate for most high school level classes.

Goals
 I want students to learn the consequences of making rules in a society.
To have students determine what kind of classroom society they want.

Materials and Resources
 There's going to definitely be a lot of writing involved here. Laws and charters are a part of many societies. There will probably be some art in creating flags and thinking about national aspects of heritage. As far as resources go I think that the book that is being used to look at these topics in a more analytical fashion is the most important part of making this lesson a valuable one for the students. They need to be challenged, and painted a picture that something different than they're used to seeing.

Activities
 Many people have had students create societies in classes. This is something that I've seen and heard of being done with the Lord of the Flies a number of times. That book is a valid excuse to get students into this exercise, but it's not the only one that could be used.
 Before reading the chosen text I’ll have the students construct societies. They'll think about laws and charters, about government and a number of things. Once they complete them we can talk about the differences between them, why they chose to set things up they way that they did. I want to stress the point that there isn't a right way to do things (or government might actually work).
 After setting them up to be interested I would have them read the book and get them to look at how the society has been set up and what the advantages/disadvantages are of having a society be that way. Once they get a little more information under their belt I would have the entire class come together and we would work on producing a charter that would work for all of us. I think that this might be an excellent way to start the semester, setting up the community/charter.

Accommodation
 What better topic than society to deal with the topic and problems of accommodation. I could only hope to have students in class that the charter would have to reflect in a special way. We need to learn as a society to function with all of our members, the classroom is a good place to start this trend.

Extension
 As described above, the afterward comparison and revision is a good extension. Perhaps you could go back and look at the classroom charter every couple of weeks and see if it's still working the way that the class intended it to.

Assessment
 I think that you'd need to evaluate the process at every step of the way. It's hard to look at their work in this as a right/wrong thing, but you can evaluate the effort that's being put into developing the materials. I have a bent to grade toward participation, and I’d probably center the activity on that. Maybe when we make the charter each student is allowed to offer one rule or precept. There are a lot of thing that could be done depending on the chosen book. I think though that the most important part of the assessment is looking at the changing perceptions of the students from before reading to after reading.