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Procedure:
This exercise is designed to be taught in one or two sessions.
- Distribute the students’ version of the “Jim Dawson” case study to your class. If you wish, divide the students into groups of two or three.
- Read aloud to them or let them read one section of the case study at a time. Don’t let them read ahead. After each section, ask each group of students what they think Jim should do next. Then, use the questions in the teachers’ version of the case study to guide them through a discussion of what Jim should do at each point.
- Finish by either explaining the memo assignment to the students.
- If you wish to move beyond words to artistic representations of a Chinese garden, have each student or student group study Chinese gardens through pictures and words in books or on the Internet (a set of Internet sites is included with these teaching notes). Then, ask students to create a design for “their” Chinese garden, using watercolors, pastels, or any other medium.
Closure/Assessment:
Review students’ written and/or artistic work both for basic writing or presentation skills, as well as for students’ ability to incorporate what they have learned about the basic elements of a Chinese garden. Would their essays convince you to donate money to build a Chinese garden?
Then, in small groups or as a whole group, have students review the steps they should follow when they are confronted with a challenge and don’t have enough information to move forward. Ask them to share personal experiences of having to conduct research to solve a problem. What did they do? How did they use the information they gathered? What did they do right or wrong? What would they do if they were confronted with the same problem today?
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