Design Document for Lesson Plan

Name: Leiah Tamaki & Krista Baldwin

Grade Level: 3

Concept/Topic: Active Citizenship

Length of Lesson (in minutes): 60 minutes

Materials:
● Collage of Concerns and Action Step Worksheet Link
● Crayons or Colored Pencils

Learning Objectives:
● Students will explain the role/responsibilities of citizens in their communities.
● Students will complete a concerns collage and create an action step to demonstrate how
they can contribute to their community politically, socially, or economically by
participating in community affairs.

Standards:
3.C&G.2.1 Exemplify how citizens contribute politically, socially and economically to their
community.

Key Tasks/Activities:

Whole Class Discussion

Today, we are going to be talking about citizenship. What is a citizen?
● Students will describe in their own words, what a citizen is.
● Citizens are members of a community who have certain rights and responsibilities
What kinds of responsibilities do we have as citizens?
● Students will brainstorm ideas of responsibilities of citizens (e.g. abiding by laws, voting,
volunteering, paying taxes, taking part in community affairs, being kind and respectful
towards others).
Today, we will be exploring how we can be responsible citizens by taking part in community
affairs and helping others.
● What is a community?
○ Students will describe in their own words what a community is.
○ A community is a group of people that live together. For example, people in our
city or town, and school are members of our community because we live close
together.
● What are community affairs? Can you think of any examples?
○ Students will describe in their own words what community affairs are and provide
 examples of community affairs (e.g. food drives, volunteering at an animal
shelter, protesting, joining service groups, donating supplies to schools, etc.)
○ Community affairs are activities that we participate in to help our community.
First we are going to take a look at this article. This is an example of children, acting as
responsible and caring citizens, by helping a community member in need.
● Teacher reads aloud the article to the students
● https://krcrtv.com/news/local/childrens-miracle-network-honor-preschoolers-who-raised-
10000-for-classmate-with-cancer

Group Discussion
Discuss in your table groups:
● Who did the preschoolers help?
● What did the preschoolers do to help their classmate?
● How are these preschoolers acting as responsible citizens?
Go over student responses together as a whole class. Read each question and have students raise
their hands and answer.

Activity
Now that we have seen an example of citizens acting responsibly to help members of their
community, let’s brainstorm ways that you can help members of your community. On this
worksheet is a “collage of concern” for brainstorming concerns that you have for your
community. What was the concern that the preschoolers had in their article? They were
concerned about their classmate battling brain cancer. I want you to work with a partner to
complete a “collage of concern” for some of the concerns you have about members of your
community and begin thinking about ways that you could help. On the bottom, there is a box for
you to write an action step. What I would like for you to do is to choose one concern that you
have, and write about what you can do to help. For example, one concern I have is pollution. To
help prevent pollution in my community, I will create a community group with my friends and
work together with them to pick up trash around the neighborhood.
Students will choose their partners and work in pairs to complete the concerns collage and come
up with an action step.

Conclusion
Students return to their seats and share their action step with their group members. Each group
will select one action step that they liked to share with the whole class. The teacher will call on
each group to share.

Rationale:
● The whole class discussion at the beginning of the lesson introduces students to various
responsibilities that citizens have, demonstrating to students how citizens contribute
politically, socially, and economically to their community.
● Reading the article about preschool students raising money for their classmate who is
 battling brain cancer shows an example of how people contribute to the community
through participating in community affairs. By discussing this article in the group
discussion, students learn how citizens can recognize a cause that they care about and
take action to create change or help support members of their community. We selected an
article showing children contributing to their community because when we conducted a
survey on students' knowledge of citizenship in our 3rd grade class, we recognized that
students had the misconception that they needed to be adults to contribute to their
community. This article shows students how they too can contribute as young members
of our community.
● The class activity where students create a collage of concerns and choose one concern to
create an action step builds on their knowledge of how citizens contribute to the
community in various ways. Students are applying their understanding, and creating an
action plan that demonstrates their knowledge of the different ways that they undertake
the responsibilities of citizenship. The collage of concerns allows them to explore various
issues that they recognize in their community which will prompt them to think about how
they as citizens can contribute politically, socially, and economically to support different
causes. Furthermore, through the survey that we conducted with students about their
knowledge of citizenship, we noticed that many students had difficulty coming up with
multiple examples of how citizens can support their communities. Therefore, with this
activity we aim to widen students’ scope of ways that they can contribute.

Anticipating Students’ Responses:

● Students believe that the main characteristic of a citizen is their physical, or geographic
location - they are a member of a community. Some students believe that citizens strictly
follow the rules of their community.
● Students think that citizens can contribute to the community by cleaning up trash or
helping lower-income individuals and families in the community. They may have
occupations like being in the military or working in hospitals.
● Students describe giving back to the community as raising money for local organizations,
picking up trash, helping neighbors, and having a service-related occupation as an adult.
● Some students believe that in order to contribute to their community, they need to be
adults.
● Analysis of Survey Conducted on Students’ Ideas About Citizenship
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JdCL2CKgoIbXs9tYqbxg5U92riQbM2J4/view?
usp=sharing
● Link to Student Survey on Students’ Ideas About Citizenship
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdu3760x52S4xQWz0ZytGQ6rTb6x0jrrt2q-
HC0QmC_mgHs4g/viewform?usp=sf_link

Responding to Students’ Responses:

● While working in pairs, if students are stuck on creating a collage of concern and have
 difficulty brainstorming concerns, I will ask what their interests are, what they do on the
weekends, or what they would want to change about their school in order to help them
brainstorm ideas.
● To extend thinking for some students, I will ask them to think about how they might
persuade others to help and get involved in their action step or how they could implement
the action step school- or community-wide.

Development of Practices among Students:

In the C3 Framework, Dimension 4 is Communicating Conclusions and Taking Informed Action.
The tasks of this lesson require students to draw conclusions about their passions and the needs
in their community to brainstorm ideas for how they might take informed action. Students are
communicating their conclusions through writing, discussing with their partners, and their
groups.

Assessment:
Students will complete a collage of concerns and an action step description that will be collected
as a formative assessment. From the assessments, I will be able to know if students can identify
that they can participate and contribute to their community and give specific examples of how
they could contribute politically, socially, or economically. If students can identify various
concerns that they recognize they can impact on and create an action plan on how they can
contribute to a cause, they are demonstrating that they understand that citizenship responsibilities
include contributing to their community and the various ways that citizens can contribute to their
community.

Vocabulary/Language Function:
● Citizens: members of a community who have certain rights and responsibilities
● Citizenship: membership in a political community with certain rights and privileges.
(Retrieved from NC DPI 3rd Grade Social Studies Unpacked Content)
● Community: a group of people living together. (Retrieved from NC DPI 3rd Grade
Social Studies Unpacked Content)

Classroom Management Plan:

In the classroom, students use call-and-response to focus their attention on the teacher. Students
will be motivated to stay engaged throughout the lesson as they will be provided the opportunity
to share their ideas with the group at the end of the lesson. The teacher will walk around while
pairs are discussing and creating their action plans to help guide students’ thinking and to help
keep students engaged in the task. To set and enforce expectations, students will be given clear
and concise directions for how they are to start and complete the task. Transitions will be both
smooth and efficient through including this as an expectation at the start of the lesson and by
giving students reminders, as needed.