Essential Question: How can you become a better citizen?
Essential Understandings
- A good citizen respects and protects the rights and property of others and takes part in actions that can improve the school and community.
- Characteristics of a good citizen include honesty, compassion, respect, responsibility, courage, reliable, hard-working, and determined.
- Citizenship is being a member of a community and taking on fulls rights and responsibilities to improve their community.
- People contribute to their community by practicing the responsibilities of a good citizen and lending a helping hand in many different ways.
- Responsibilities of a good citizen include taking part in the voting process, demonstrating self-discipline and self-reliance, practicing honesty and trustworthiness, and describing actions that can improve the school and community.
This Social Studies Unit is intended for 2nd grade, although it may be altered for other grades. This Citizenship Unit would be most beneficial if it were taught
in the beginning of the year as a means of promoting and encouraging citizenship in the classroom, school, and community throughout the year.
What Are They Thinking?
A common theme I gathered from the students’ responses is that most students have a similar idea of what a good citizen is and can produce an example. For example, almost all of the students gave the example of someone dropping money. They said that a good citizen would pick up the money and give it back to the person. With that being said, the students have a basic understanding of what a good citizen does, but need to go further in depth. I was also interested to hear what the students wanted to learn about citizenship. After viewing their responses, I was very surprised and intrigued by the questions they came up with: How people can get along and encourage others, what do citizens do, how I could have friends, (the student told me he was a good citizen, but did not have any friends) what do they all do, how can you become a citizen, do you need a job to be a citizen? All of these questions provide excellent insight into what the students are thinking in regards to citizenship; they also allow me to properly judge the appropriate level of instruction in regards to my essential question. This affects my unit plan because I can spend less time on what a good citizen is and more time on how students can become better citizens.
What Are They Thinking?
A common theme I gathered from the students’ responses is that most students have a similar idea of what a good citizen is and can produce an example. For example, almost all of the students gave the example of someone dropping money. They said that a good citizen would pick up the money and give it back to the person. With that being said, the students have a basic understanding of what a good citizen does, but need to go further in depth. I was also interested to hear what the students wanted to learn about citizenship. After viewing their responses, I was very surprised and intrigued by the questions they came up with: How people can get along and encourage others, what do citizens do, how I could have friends, (the student told me he was a good citizen, but did not have any friends) what do they all do, how can you become a citizen, do you need a job to be a citizen? All of these questions provide excellent insight into what the students are thinking in regards to citizenship; they also allow me to properly judge the appropriate level of instruction in regards to my essential question. This affects my unit plan because I can spend less time on what a good citizen is and more time on how students can become better citizens.