Student Resources:

• Piece of paper and writing utensil

Teacher Resources:

• Citizens Scenarios Cards

Facilitation Notes

• Review the Outward Civic Life: Civic Groups Lesson Plan for prior information on civic society, if necessary, before completing this lesson.

Engage

• Write the question “What makes someone a good citizen?” on the board.
• Instruct students to think-pair-share their answers.
  • In think-pair-share, students consider a question, find a partner, then share their answer. Partners can be assigned or chosen by students, depending on your group of learners.
• List their answers on the board, separating them by “Rights” and “Responsibilities” without labeling. When the class is done sharing, ask if they can explain why the words and phrases have been separated the way they have.
• Ask students to explain the difference between rights and responsibilities. Possible explanations could be rights are things people get to do like voting or speaking their mind about the government and responsibilities are things people should do like pay taxes or being informed.

Explore

• Divide students into partners and hand out one scenario to each partnership. Depending on class size, you will need to double or triple the scenario cards.
• Each partnership will read their scenario, discussing and answering the questions, recording their answer on a piece of paper.
• After 5 minutes, partnerships will then change scenario cards until each group has had five scenarios.

Teacher note: Modify the number of scenarios or time allowed to fit the length of your class time.

• Optional Activity: Teachers can have partnerships act out the scenarios showing what an irresponsible and responsible citizen would do.

Assess & Reflect

Option 1: List Revision

• Review the list of “What makes a good citizen?” from the beginning of class, adding new things from partnership discussions.

AND/OR

Option 2: Personal Plan

• Ask students to record a way they can practice a right and a responsibility they have to be a good citizen this week. Ideas for recording include writing, audio, or video recording and posting to a class LMS discussion.