Lesson 1 — Ethics as Reasoned Weighing

Summary

Learners recall Grade-9 ideas about ethical reasoning, systemic injustice, power, and reconciliation, and preview this unit’s four strands. They meet the unit’s organizing skill: weighing benefits and harms for people and the planet, read through four cross-cutting lenses.

Objectives

• Begin to name ethical reasoning as weighing benefits and harms for people and the planet, and locate that skill in this unit’s four strands. (D09.S1.10.01)

Connection

Think of a place you share with other people and with other living things — a kitchen, a field, a street, a water source, a forest, a shoreline. Every choice about that place gives something to someone and takes something from someone else: a road helps drivers but can cut a farm in two; a new well serves many families but draws water that used to reach a wetland downstream. Noticing who gains and who loses — and then deciding, with care, what is worth it — is ethical reasoning as weighing. It is something people in every culture and every time have done, and it is the skill this whole unit is built on.

Materials

• Unit map sheet
• Recall cards

Preparation

• Copy the unit map sheet and recall cards.
• Retrieval: from Grade 9, recall (a) the three ethical lenses — consequences, duties, virtues; (b) systemic injustice — how actions, rules, and structures combine; (c) power and accountability; and (d) reconciliation and restorative justice. Today we link those to a new skill — weighing benefits and harms.

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 four Grade-9 ideas; (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 skill: ethical reasoning as weighing benefits and harms for people and the planet, read through the four cross-cutting lenses. Do not teach the weighing skill in depth today; just name and locate it. 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. The technology & environment lens: every tool and every use of land has effects on people and on the Earth. 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 four recall cards: three lenses (consequences, duties, virtues); systemic injustice; power and accountability; reconciliation and restorative justice. For each, say in one sentence what you remember from Grade 9.
2. Connect them (5 min). What do all four have in common? (Each is about how people live together fairly — 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 skill in one breath: ethical reasoning weighs benefits and harms for people and the planet, and reads every question through four lenses — ethics, egalitarianism, global, technology & environment. Say it back in your own words, and name one benefit and one harm you can already see in the scale on the map.
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 weigh a real technology — the phone in your hand.

Differentiation

• Support: Give sentence starters for the recall round (“A moral dilemma is a choice where…”; “Systemic injustice means…”).
• Extension: Add a fourth Grade-9 idea of your own and say why it will matter in this unit.
• Expression: Learners who do not speak aloud can write, draw, sign, or dictate their recall and wonder-box question, point to a strand on the map, or have a partner read their written words — no step requires the voice.

Assessment

• Formative (observation): Can the learner recall each Grade-9 idea in one sentence and name the unit’s four strands and the weighing skill?
• 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 where you had to weigh what one person gained against what someone else lost? 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).