Sarah Domenick

Immigration and Citizenship

What Makes A Good Citizen?
Grade: 3
Subject: Social Studies

Integration of Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to understand and define what makes a
good citizens/what is citizenship.
Students will be able to talk and write about the rights and
responsibilities of a good citizen and be able to decide what a
good citizen would do based on a given situation.
Students will be able to act out and collaborate with a small
group to create a response to a prompt about citizenship.

Standards
Standard - 5.1.3.A
Explain the purposes of rules, laws, and consequences.
Standard 5.2.3.D.
Describe how citizens participate in school and community
activities.
Standard 5.3.3.F
Explain how an action may be just or unjust.

NCSS Themes:
o People, Places, and Environment
Analyze a particular event and to identify how an
individual may respond in certain ways.
o Individual Development and Identity
Show how learning and physical development affect
behavior.
o Civic Ideals and Practices
Identify examples of rights and responsibilities as
citizens.

Anticipatory Set
1. The teacher will begin this lesson by asking the class what they
think it means to be a good citizen.
2. After taking responses from three-five students, the teacher will
then ask for examples on how people can become good citizens.
a. Examples of some questions might be: What actions do
people who are good citizens do? Are good citizens helpful?
How? Do they follow the rules? Why? Have you seen any
examples in your life?
3. Let the students brainstorm for a view minutes and think about
what they have seen in their own lives. Answers could include I
helped clean up the park, I walked away from an argument, I
helped my parents.
4. Define citizenship and what it means to be a good citizen for the
students.
 a. Explain that not following these laws and rules lead to
consequences. (Citizenship is obeying the laws and rules of
the government and supporting ones community and
country in a positive way.)
5. Ask the students for characteristics to describe good citizens
and put them on the SMARTboard using the word cloud app or
website.
6. This app allows the students to see all of their characteristics
come together in one cloud so they can see they all represent
a good citizen.
a. Examples of good characteristics are polite, kind, helpful,
nice, happy, engaged, and involved.
b. Examples of bad characteristics are rude, mean, and
unhelpful.
7. After each student adds a word, hit complete and the world cloud
will appear!

Procedures
1. Explain to the students that we are going to be thinking about
the words we used to describe good citizens and how they act to
represent positive citizenship.
2. Divide the class into groups of 3-4 students each.
a. (Groupings will be made based on table groups, so random.
To differentiate, the groupings would be pre-planned based
on skill-level.)
3. Ask groups to come up with a scenario/skit of how a good citizen
would respond to a problem and how a bad citizen would respond
to the same problem.
4. Present an example scenario to the class: You are at the grocery
store and someone drops their wallet on the ground, but you do
not see anyone around. What do you do if you are a good
citizen? What would a bad citizen do?
5. Allow students 5 minutes to come up with a scenario.
6. Circulate to all groups to aid in the creation of any scenarios if
needed, and to hear what each group has come up with.
a. Leading questions could include: What if you saw
someone holding a lot of heavy packages? Would you help
them? Another example is Your mom ran out of gas on
her way to work and no one stopped to help her. Are these
people good or bad citizens?
7. Ask the students to sit down with their group when they are
ready to share.
8. Have each group present their scenario to the class, displaying
the actions of a good and bad citizen without naming which is
which.
9. Have the rest of the class guess as each group performs which
actions describe which kind of citizen.
10. After naming good or bad, ask the student who answered
why they think that is correct. What did they see that makes
them think this is a depiction of a good or bad citizen?
a. Examples of good characteristics could include: helpful,
kind, polite, happy, friendly, involved
 b. Examples of bad characteristics are rude, unhelpful, sad,
mean
11. After all groups have finished, review the definition of
citizenship and what makes a good citizen again for the class.
12. Reference the word cloud that was made in the beginning
of the class period if necessary for the review.
13. Disperse students back to their seats for independent
writing.
14. Pass out paper to each student.
15. Give students five minutes to work and to draw a picture of
them being a good citizen.
16. When they are finished, write a sentence or two under the
picture that describes the scene.
17. Share within their table about what they wrote and drew.
18. If time take student volunteers to share with the entire
class.
19. Hang student work on the wall to display for the next week.

Differentiation
Verbal/linguistic- Ask students to write their describing words
of good citizenship on notecards or paper to give to the teacher
to add to the word cloud. Students can also write down how they
plan to contribute to their community in the future and become
good citizens.
Kinesthetic- Kinesthetic learning will be addressed by asking
the students to create a skit. They will be performing their
understanding with movements and acting out with their
classmates. To address further if needed, students could create
another skit of their choice on their own rather than the
independent writing.
Interpersonal- Students will be working together to create a
skit and scenario of good citizenship. To further differentiate,
students can work in groups to brainstorm their definition of a
good citizen to start the lesson. They can discuss with each other
the examples of citizenship that they have seen in their life.
Intrapersonal- The independent writing aspect to conclude the
lesson allows students to work individually on reviewing the
concepts that they have learned from todays lesson.
Advanced students- For students that are excelling, have them
only write about what they would do as a good citizen rather
than drawing a picture like the rest of the students.
Struggling- For students who are struggling with the task,
teacher can assign them scenarios that have been pre-planned
and have them act them out.
For the writing portion, have students draw and write a
sentence about the same scenario they were given to act
out. This eliminates them having to think of and describe a
new scenario.

Closure
 Tell students that good citizens play an important role in society
and review the definitions and characteristics of good citizens
that the class came up with.
Take volunteers to share with the class what their favorite good
citizenship skit they saw their classmates act out was and why.
How could they tell the difference between the citizens who were
good and who were bad?
Ask students how they can be a good citizen in their community
when they leave school and what they are going to do to help
their community.

Formative / Summative Assessment

Formative- Students will be performing and creating a skit to
represent their knowledge and understanding of citizenship.
o Teacher will be able to observe throughout the process if
students are able to come up with a skit representing good
citizenship.
o Students will distinguish whether or not a groups actions
are portraying a good or bad citizen.
Summative- Citizenship worksheets completed by the students
will be collected and evaluated for understanding of the activity
and goals that were to be reached.
o Worksheets should display a photo of an action of a good
citizen with a sentence describing what this action is.
Student should have clear depiction of an act of good
citizenship in his/her drawing and described this action in a
few sentences.

Materials / Equipment
Computer
Word Cloud machine
Paper
Markers
Writing Utensils
Crayons
Notecards (Optional)

Technology
SMARTboard to write down characteristics of good citizens.
Word Cloud app or www.wordclouds.com