Elementary Education Program

Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

Lesson Plan

Name: ​Krista Baldwin & Leiah Tamaki

Grade:​ 3

Topic/Concept:​ Active Citizenship

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

Teaching Behavior Focus:

● Orchestrate Discussions: Students will be provided with the opportunity to participate in
engaging whole group discussions based on the higher-level questions asked by the
teacher. When students are asked to share their thoughts and ideas, the teacher will
provide students with at least 3 seconds of wait time. Collaboration with their partners on
the concerns collage encourages discussion that integrates the learners’
interest/experiences because they will be discussing concerns that come from their own
experiences in the community.
● Promote Collaboration: This lesson fosters student engagement through group
discussions where they answer discussion questions pertaining to the article and share
their actions steps. They also collaborate with a partner to create the concerns collage and
to plan an action step.

Learning Objectives (measurable):

● 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.

Assessment Plan:
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
 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

community.

New Vocabulary:
● 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)

Lesson Development:

Hook
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

Engage
Group Discussion
Discuss in your table groups:
● Who did the preschoolers help?
● What did the preschoolers do to help their classmate?
 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

● 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.

Launch
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
Discussion
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.