Citizenship in Local Government

Goals:

Acquisition Goals

  • Students will know about the different structures of government and governmental roles within their locality. (School district, school board, town officials, town meeting, moderator for examples.)
  • Students will know Robert’s Rules of Parliamentary Procedure, the meaning of: citizen, direct democracy, representative democracy, constitution, warrant article, annual report, election, moderator, chair, and other relevant vocabulary.

Meaning Goals

  • Student will understand that he/she has a voice in the local community and how to utilize the local government structures (and other avenues, such as letters to the editor) to have that voice heard.
  • If a student sees something that he/she believes should be changed, there are ways to make this happen within the local governmental structure and process.
  • Students should understand that some will disagree with their position and know that they will need to support their opinion with evidence and planning.

Transfer Goals

  • Students will be able to independently use their learning (citizenship skills, knowledge, and attitudes) to meaningfully participate in their local form of government (in this case, school board meeting, town meeting, and/or school district meetings.)
  • Long-term independent accomplishments desired are: written and spoken persuasive arguments, understanding of rules and structures of local government, active participation in local government.

Lesson Objectives:

  • Students will be skilled at utilizing and applying Robert’s Rules to facilitate debate and democratic decision making.
  • Students will understand how to research, gather evidence, create a strong persuasive statement (written, oral) of their position.
  • Students will anticipate the argument that those disagreeing will put forth and demonstrate listening skills.

Essential Questions:

  • What does it mean to be a “good citizen?”
  • How do people in Canterbury come together to make decisions? What does it mean to have a voice in your local community?
  • How can we best encourage more people to participate in their democracy?

Assessments:

Performance Tasks:

  • Presentation at School District Meeting or Town Meeting (written and oral communication) and/or Performance at Mock Town Meeting (written and oral communication)

Other Evaluative Criteria

  • Students will demonstrate their understanding (meaning-making and transfer) through the complex performance required to participate in their town government.
  • They will need to demonstrate teamwork, cooperation, listening, speaking, clear writing, researching, persuasive communication, understanding of the qualities necessary to be a ‘good citizen,’ other important vocabulary such as democracy (direct, representative), moderator, civility etc. and Robert’s Rules. The tasks that will be evaluated are the above performance tasks, cooperative work within a committee, quizzes on vocabulary and other concepts.
  • Effective communication (writing, listening, speaking,) quality research (diversity and validity of sources,) cooperation, compromise, anticipation of/responding to other side’s argument, effective use of Robert’s Rules of Parliamentary procedure.
  • Citizenship skills, knowledge, and attitudes.

Teacher observations of planning and research process, written products, oral presentations, self-evaluations, teacher evaluation of performance tasks.

Note: Product criteria might vary. Content criteria would not. The moderator would be graded more heavily on “process” and he could express his knowledge of content by writing a letter to the editor, for example. Some would work on visual aids, some would focus on research, some on writing, some on spoken presentation.  Some content (various activities engaged in by “the good citizen,” reasons that some individuals do not engage in the political process, the importance of engaging in order to maintain democracy, important concepts, vocabulary) would be assessed earlier via more traditional means (essays, test).

Materials:

  • Town website
  • School District website
  • Town Annual Report
  • Robert’s Rules of Order
  • Robert’s Rules for Kids: A Guide to Teaching Children from Kindergarten to the 5th Grade the Basics of Parliamentary Procedure by Ted Weisgal.
  • “Town Meeting Means Me,” 1951 by Mina Turner, illustrated by Lloyd Coe
  • New Hampshire 4th Graders To Name White House Hawk

Differentiation:

  • Students with special needs will be assigned to certain roles and groups carefully throughout this process. They should be assigned whatever supports would come with their 504 or IEP plan (a scribe for taking minutes? A support and research role instead of a public speaking role if they are highly anxious? etc.)
  • Pre-teaching may be necessary for some students. If a student for some reason can’t participate in the night-time meetings, he/she could watch them on a videotape and/or respond in a different way (e.g. writing a letter to a representative or to the newspaper.)
  • Students should (within reason) be given choices as to how they express their knowledge, meaning-making, and transfer.

“Keep up the highly engaging and intellectual seminars! The Constitution is of utmost importance!”

– Teacher, 2015

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