INQUIRY LESSON PLAN

Teachers: Aaron Romero Subject: Civics/social Grade:6th

studies
Common Core State Standards:
 6.C4.2 Describe and apply civic virtues including deliberative processes that contribute to the
common good and democratic principles in school, community, and government.
 • Key concepts include but are not limited to civility, respect for the rights of others, individual
responsibility, respect for law, open mindedness, critical examination of
 issues, negotiation and compromise, civic mindedness, compassion, patriotism, conciliation, and
consensus building
Objective (Explicit):
 Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the civic participation and the process of the
legislative branch by participating in a mock congress and presenting a motion to repeal or create
legislation
Evidence of Mastery (Measurable):
 Include a copy of the lesson assessment.
 Provide exemplar student responses with the level of detail you expect to see.
 Assign value to each portion of the response

Mastery of first day content will include a personal analysis of what makes laws food or bad as well as contemporary and historical examples of good
and bad laws as defined by student metrics.

Specific questions that are addressed are located in the “Teacher will” section Evaluate section of lesson plan. There are no explicitly correct answers,
students simply demonstrate understanding by relaying examples and having ability to explain their thought process.
Sub-Objectives, SWBAT (Sequenced from basic to complex)
 How will you review past learning and make connections to previous lessons?
 What skills and content are needed to ultimately master this lesson objective?
 How is this objective relative to students, their lives, and/or the real world?

Students will be able to explain the purposes of regulation by using historical examples as well as be able to point to regulation that was ineffective
and repealed by using examples.
Key vocabulary: Congress, Legislative branch, excess of Materials: Projector, laptops with internet access,
government, necessity of government, civic action content area notebook
Engage
 How will you activate prior knowledge?
 How will you hook student attention?
 What question will you pose, based on your objective, that students will seek to answer in Explore?
Teacher Will: Students Will:

Teacher will ask a discussion question about laws and regulation:
“How do laws affect us in our daily life? What are examples of good
laws or bad laws in your opinion?”
Videoclip will be played about how lack of laws contributed to slums in
New York in late 1890’s “YouTube Jacob Riis Clip”
Videoclip will be played depicting a modern law some believe is
unwarranted, fining of lemonade stands “CBS news lemonade stand
fined”
Instructor will introduce driving question
You are a part of the state legislature you are in charge or making laws,
what law will you chose to introduce to the legislature or alternatively
which law do you wish to see repealed?
Students will participate in discussion and begin to write down
their ideas.
Write pros and cons of laws in social studies notebook. Group
discussion about their thoughts and concerns of the video. Laws
that are good or bad must be explained with evidence why they
are categorized as such.
Students will brainstorm and start to create questions that can
help them solve their assignment. In addition to what skills they
need to participate in a mock legislature.

Explore
 How will you model your performance expectations? (Remember you are not modeling what you want students to discover but need to
model expected behavior or required procedures.)
  How will students take the lead and actively use materials to discover information that will help them answer the question posed in the
Engage?
 What questions or prompts will you be prepared to use with students while they are “exploring”?
Teacher Will: Students Will:

Distribute chrome books to students Utilize chrome books for research

Students will be instructed to look to use online resources to determine Students will write in their notebook what their thoughts are on a
what constitutes a good or bad law good vs bad law.

Students will be asked to evaluate good and bad laws from history
(laws that were revised or repealed and laws considered positive to
public welfare generally)
Students will be encouraged to look up local laws that affect them
positively and negatively based on their outlook
Students will give examples of historically good or bad laws with
explanation
Students will look up local laws they may think are good and bad
and evaluate them with what they know, they will take notes in
their social studies journal.

For this project to succeed the laws chosen by students should be

more regulatory in nature and not explicitly political as to avoid
community problems from parents.

Students with inappropriate law research will be redirected to laws

such as pet law/restriction, conservation law or otherwise apolitical
regulatory law.

Co-Teaching Strategy
 What co-teaching approach will you use to maximize student achievement?

Differentiation Strategy
 What accommodations/modifications will you provide for specific students?
 How will you anticipate students that need an additional challenge?
Explain
 How will all students have an opportunity to share what they discovered?
 How will you connect student discoveries to correct content terms/explanations?
 How will all students articulate/demonstrate a clear and correct understanding of the sub-objectives by answering the question from the
Engage before moving on?
Teacher Will: Students Will:

Instructor will direct students to share laws they researched to their Students will share their personal metric of why laws are good or
table peer groups bad and discuss with peers.

Instructor will assist students that require redirection or help in Students will continue their notes as desire to modify their
evaluating law personal metric of good vs bad reasoning.

Instructor will ask each table to share a good law or a bad law they Students will share what laws they observed to table group.
found
Students will delegate a speaker for their table to share ideas
Co-Teaching Strategy
 What co-teaching approach will you use to maximize student achievement?

Differentiation Strategy
 What accommodations/modifications will you provide for specific students?
 How will you anticipate students that need an additional challenge?
Elaborate
 How will students take the learning from Explore and Explain and apply it to a new circumstance or explore a particular aspect of this
learning at a deep level?
 How will students use higher order thinking at this stage (e.g. A common practice in this section is to pose a What If? Question)?
 How will all students articulate how their understanding has changed or been solidified?

Teacher Will: Students Will:

Teacher will ask following discussion questions: Brainstorm how laws are conveyed to others

What if your good law is someone’s else bad law? How do you convince Students discuss with table group and suggest solutions to
them? What evidence is required? What arguments can be made to problem, students create questions for instructor on how to
repeal a bad law? address these situations.
What background knowledge is needed?

Instructor collects chrome books from students.

Co-Teaching Strategy
 What co-teaching approach will you use to maximize student achievement?

Differentiation Strategy
 What accommodations/modifications will you provide for specific students?
 How will you anticipate students that need an additional challenge?
Evaluate
 How will all students demonstrate mastery of the lesson objective (though perhaps not mastery of the elaborate content)?
 How will students have an opportunity to summarize the big concepts they learned (separate from the assessment)?

Teacher Will: Students Will:

Give students an evaluation worksheet, this worksheet will serve to Complete worksheet individually
observe if students understand what is asked of them and have
received some background knowledge through discussion and Write any questions on back of worksheet
video. This worksheet will contain the following questions:
Turn in worksheet as exit ticket
Based on discussion and videos what explain makes a law good or
bad? Students will leave the classroom with a building block of knowledge
to help guide them further along the project.
Explain a historical example of a good or bad law?

Explain a contemporary example of a good or bad law?

End of worksheet
Teacher will facilitate during independent worksheet to answer
questions and guide students

Leave students with question “what information can I give to help

you solve your questions on the assignment?

What background knowledge do you need to participate in a mock

legislature?

Students will be instructed to write any questions on back of

assignment.

Students turn in this assignment as exit ticket