Lesson 1 — Three Lenses on Right and Wrong

Summary

Learners recall Grade-8 ideas about weighing consequences, duties, and fairness, and preview this unit’s four strands and the three ethical lenses. They meet the unit’s organizing idea: a moral question can be read through more than one lens, and each lens shows something the others miss.

Objectives

• Begin to name three ethical frameworks — consequences, duties, and virtues — as ways to read a moral question. (D09.S1.09.01)

Connection

Think of a time you faced a choice where more than one thing seemed right at once — tell a hard truth that might hurt a friend, or stay quiet to spare them; share a scarce resource, or keep it for someone who needs it more. Every such moment is a moral question, and none of us has just one way of answering it. Today we meet three lenses — consequences, duties, and virtues — that people all over the world, in every culture and time, have used to think such questions through.

Materials

• Unit map sheet
• Recall cards

Preparation

• Copy the unit map sheet and recall cards.
• Retrieval: from Grade 8, recall (a) weighing consequences, duties, and fairness in a dilemma; (b) the difference between a fact, a belief, and a value; and (c) that justice has more than one meaning. Today we link those to the new unit.

Facilitator note

This lesson is written to the learner (“you”). It is the unit’s opening and retrieval pass, so the goals are modest: (1) recall three Grade-8 ideas — a moral dilemma can be weighed by consequences, duties, and fairness; facts, beliefs, and values are different kinds of claims; and justice has more than one meaning; (2) preview the unit’s four strands — moral reasoning & values; fairness, justice & rights; civic participation & collective action; peace, conflict & restorative practice; (3) plant the organizing idea: a moral question is read through more than one lens (consequences, duties, virtues), and each lens shows something the others miss. Do not teach the three lenses in depth today; just name and locate them. The ethics lens: right and wrong are questions we reason about, not slogans we accept. The egalitarian lens: always ask who benefits and who is left out. The global lens: every culture has ways of thinking about a good life and a fair society — none is the default. Hold questions open: nothing here is creed (philosophy §11). Distinguish evidence from values throughout (philosophy §5). Spacing note (S-039): this recall pass is what makes the unit’s ideas stick later.

Procedure

1. Recall (10 min). In a small group, look at three recall cards: weighing consequences, duties, and fairness; fact vs. belief vs. value; justice has more than one meaning. For each, say in one sentence what you remember from Grade 8.
2. Connect the three (5 min). What do all three have in common? (Each is about how we think about right and wrong — carefully, and with more than one answer on the table.)
3. Meet the map (10 min). Look at the unit map. Four strands: moral reasoning & values, fairness, justice & rights, civic participation & collective action, peace, conflict & restorative practice. Read each goal aloud once; don’t worry about understanding them yet.
4. Plant the big idea (10 min). The unit’s idea in one breath: a moral question can be read through three lenses — consequences (what happens, to whom?), duties (what do I owe, no matter what?), and virtues (what kind of person would I become?). Say it back in your own words.
5. Wonder (10 min). Write one question about each strand in the wonder box. Which question do you most want answered by the end of the unit?
6. Close (5 min). Today we remembered what we know and saw the road ahead. Next: we look closely through the first lens — consequences.

Differentiation

• Support: Give sentence starters for the recall round (“A moral dilemma is a choice where…”).
• Extension: Add a fourth Grade-8 idea of your own and say why it will matter in this unit.

Assessment

• Formative (observation): Can the learner recall each Grade-8 idea in one sentence and name the unit’s four strands and three lenses?
• Artifact: The completed unit map (or the learner’s written recall), kept in the portfolio.

Home connection

Ask someone at home: what is one decision you still think about — where you had to weigh what would happen against what you felt you owed? Bring the shape of the story (no names needed) to the next lesson.

Resources

• On explicit instruction and worked examples: Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006), https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1 (S-011).
• On the payoff of spaced retrieval: Dunlosky et al. (2013), https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266 (S-039).
• On the three ethical frameworks as distinct, long-standing traditions: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Consequentialism” (S-456); “Deontological Ethics” (S-457); “Virtue Ethics” (S-458).