Unit Three: Being an active community member.
Unit Three: Being an active community member.
This unit is the culmination of what students have learned and are now applying. Students have gathered information on their community and a problem their community faces. Students will now apply what they have learned about forms of civic engagement and propose a project to make that change and then enact that change.
Students can complete this project independently or work with another student if they have researched the same problem. Part One of this project requires students to do something and be active about their issues. For example, community participation could be organizing a food drive, going to a town meeting, writing letters to a local official, etc. Ensure in the beginning stages that this is something feasible for students to do in the amount of time you have.
Learning Outcomes
Standards addressed in the project:
12.G4 POLITICAL AND CIVIC PARTICIPATION: There are numerous avenues for engagement in the political process, from exercising the power of the vote, to affiliating with political parties, to engaging in other forms of civic participation. Citizens leverage both electoral and non-electoral means to participate in the political process. Conceptual Understanding: 12.G4e Citizens participate in civic life through volunteerism and advocacy, including efforts such as contacting elected officials, signing/organizing petitions, protesting, canvassing, and participating in/organizing boycotts.
Learning Outcomes
- Students will actively participate in their community.
- Students will reflect on participation in their community.
Performance Objectives
- Participate in activities that focus on a classroom, school, community, state, or national issue or problem.
- Participate in persuading, debating, negotiating, and compromising in the resolution of conflicts and differences.
- Work to influence those in positions of power to strive for extensions of freedom, social justice, and human rights.
- Fulfill social and political responsibilities associated with citizenship in a democratic society and interdependent global community by developing awareness of and/or engaging in the political process.
Best Practices for Project-Based Learning
Students are given clear expectations and guidelines for the project (Hess, 2009). This can be seen in the handout and rubric, and the scaffolded lesson.
Common characteristics of project-based learning (PBL) that are most important in this unit has students reading and writing for "purposes beyond school; read and write material they see as relevant to their lives; and read and write texts on topics of interest to them" (Duke et al., 2018, p. 16). In this assessment, students are provided a choice in what issue they explore and how they will present it. This project is relevant to students' lives and engages them in meaningful ways.
This project instills the concept of "agency," which "describes ways in which young people feel they can make a difference in their community" (Mitra et al., 2015, p. 39). With the idea of "making a difference" comes the construct of "self-efficacy," which believes that one's actions can cause change.
Unit Three Lesson and Handouts
Educators can adapt this lesson to the time frame that you have. Students have had class time to work on their projects. I have added a lesson for low-stakes presentations, which allows students to get peer feedback. If there is time after low-stakes presentations, students should have class time to work on the project. The following day students should be presenting their proposals. File:FinalProject.pdf
Part One of this project should be assigned as homework for whatever is incomplete. Students can be given up to one week to complete part two because they need time to participate in the community and reflect on that experience.
File:Unit Three Presentation.pdf
Assessments
Students are formatively assessed at the end of this unit on their project.
Rubrics: Civic Engagement Project rubric should be used for final project parts one and two. Educators should use the second rubric in part two. Total points are out of 100; part one 50 points, cut two 50 points. Feedback is another essential aspect of the summative assessment (Larson & Lockee, 2019). It would be beneficial to provide students with oral feedback as well. This way, they can ask any lingering questions and address questions.
References
Duke, N. K., Halvorsen, A. L., & Strachan, S. L. (2016). Project-based learning not just for STEM anymore. Phi Delta Kappan, 98(1), pp. 14-19.
Hess, D. E. (2009). Controversy in the classroom: The democratic power of discussion. Routledge. pp. 53-76.
Larson, M. B., & Lockee, B. B. (2019). Streamlined ID: A practical guide to instructional design (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Mitra, D., & Serriere, S. C. (2015). Civic education in the elementary grades: Promoting student engagement in an era of accountability. Teachers College Press. pp. 38-54.