The Tikkun Project
Lesson
9
Evaluating the Problems and Planning an Action
Concept
Returning to the criteria with new evidence from research, from comparing systems, and from the expert visit is what separates a plan grounded in reality from one grounded only in initial impressions.
Focus Question
Which of the problems we've researched has the greatest potential to be addressed through our Critical Challenge?
Knowledge & Understanding Goals
Social Studies, People and Environments Strand B — The Role of Government and Responsible Citizenship, Grade 5: Apply criteria to evaluate the feasibility and potential impact of a proposed civic action.
Thinking & Learning Skills
ATL — Thinking Skills: Re-applying established criteria to revised evidence; making a final, justified selection.
Learner Profile: Reflective, Principled.
Context
The unit's decision-point lesson after this, the class (or small groups) commit to one specific issue and begin building their actual action plan (Lessons 10–11). Deliberately short: it's a decisive re-evaluation checkpoint that draws on everything built so far (Lesson 2's criteria, Lesson 3's jurisdiction knowledge, Lesson 5's comparative-systems thinking, Lesson 8's expert conversation), not a new content lesson.
Lesson Outline
RE-EVALUATING OUR PROBLEMS
In the same small groups that researched problems in Lesson 3, students revise their answers on the "Thinking About Problems" worksheet, incorporating what they learned from the expert visit, then re-rate each candidate problem using the established criteria: impact on quality of life (1–5); fair/equitable to very unfair/inequitable (1–5); unlikely to likely we can make progress (1–5).
REVISITING THE HILLEL CHECK
Alongside the numeric re-rating, students revisit their Lesson 2 Hillel Check answers for the strongest remaining candidates — has anything learned since then (from research, comparing systems, or the expert visit) changed how they'd answer any of the three questions? This is a qualitative companion to the numeric scores: a problem can score well on the criteria and still feel like the wrong choice if no one can give a genuine answer to "why does this matter to me."
CHOOSING A PATH FORWARD
Decide — as a class working on one shared problem, or as small groups each committing to a problem with strong potential — which issue(s) the class will move forward with for the Critical Challenge.
Notes for Teaching and Evaluation
Deliberately re-using the exact rating scale and criteria from Lesson 3, rather than introducing a fresh evaluation method here, is what makes this lesson a genuine re-evaluation — students are directly comparing a "before expert visit" number to an "after expert visit" number on the same scale, which is what makes a real shift (or the absence of one) visible and assessable.
Revisiting the Hillel Check here, rather than only at Lesson 2, treats personal motivation as something that can genuinely change with new evidence, the same way a numeric rating can — a student might discover a stronger personal connection to an issue after the expert visit, or lose one.