Ethical dilemmas and the Scale of Justice

Ethics – a New Topic to Support Common Core

Posted by Andrew Gardner on

BrainPOP’s newest topic, ethics, provides an accessible, engaging storyline and a terrific entry point for students to frame and build skills focused on in the Common Core State Standards. Understanding the ethical dimension of reasoning will prepare students for critically evaluating a broad range of topics, from science and technology to history and literature. BrainPOP is making an strong effort to support implementation of the Common Core State Standards by creating new topic movies that consider changes in curriculum and performance based assessment. The Common Core standards for English Language Arts emphasize proficiency in making and evaluating arguments, problem-solving, and critical reasoning. Be sure to visit our BrainPOP and the Common Core support page for more information.

Our ethics movie begins with age old questions – when you’re faced with a tough decision, how do you figure out what to do? What guidelines or examples do you use to make up your mind, and what happens when there’s more than one good way to act?  Tim and Moby offer some simple advice on what to do when you’re faced with tough choices about right and wrong, or good and bad. Students will consider some rules of thumb about ethical decision making, including ways to find a solution that does the most good while doing the least amount of harm.

Ethics also primes students for success with Executive CommandArgument Wars, and Quandary on GameUp. These decision making games will give students a chance to actively apply the movie’s lessons.