Lesson Plan: Rain Savers

Subjects:

Civics/Government

Grade Level:

5-12+

Lesson Duration:

Two class periods

Essential Question:

• What makes an effective citizen?

Lesson Objectives:

Students will:

• Explain the responsibilities and duties of all individuals (citizens and noncitizens) in a republic.
• Discuss and analyze the attributes and actions of an effective citizen.
• Examine human influence on water collection and drainage.

Materials:

• Retro Report video “Fighting Drought With an Ancient Practice: Harvesting the Rain” (Transcript)
• Student Activity handout (may be copied and edited; you may want to personalize the directions for the one-pager activity, see #8)
• 4 Tagboards with the 4 lesson questions written on top
• 4 colored markers
• Variation: Prepared posters with brainstorm answers on them (accommodation)
• 1-Pager Templates (Design: Alex Remnick), Retro Report
• Standard 8 ½ x 11 sheets of unlined paper

Procedure:

1. Previous lessons should establish the basic vocabulary students will need to better understand and contribute to today’s lesson, including words and phrases like civic virtue, citizen (the legal definition as well as in the more generic sense, as in “member of community”) and civic life, “the public life of the citizen concerned with the affairs of the community and nation as contrasted with private or personal life, which is devoted to the pursuit of private and personal interests.”
   1. 9-12 Content Standards | Center for Civic Education. (2014). National standards for civics and government. Calabasas, CA: Author.
2. In their review of civic education programs in the United States Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer find three understandings of what it means to be a good citizen:

Source: Westheimer, Joel, and Joseph Kahne. “Educating the ‘Good’ Citizen: Political Choices and Pedagogical Goals.” PS: Political Science & Politics 37.2 (2004): 241-247.

3. Go over the three kinds of citizens, explaining that the categories are not mutually exclusive, and that neither style has weight over the others. Ask students to think of actions that would fit each style – perhaps something they do or have done.
   1. Optional: For younger students, consider giving cut-outs with various descriptions of citizen actions for students to categorize on chart paper. Examples below.

personally responsible citizen  |  participatory citizen  |  justice-oriented citizen

• • Person who attends an important town meeting
  • Person who works hard
  • Person who knows how government agencies work
  • Person who explores why people are hungry and acts to solve the causes
  • Person who works to change a system that is not fair
  • Person who obeys laws/rules
  • Person who votes in elections
  • Person who coordinates collection of clothes for people in need
  • Person who joins a political party
  • Person who is a dependable family member

4.  Effective Citizen Carousel:

1. 1. Divide students into groups of 3-5 students.
   2. Assign each group a different color marker and provide tag boards or large pieces of paper.
   3. Instruct students to share their names and select a person to be the writer for the group.
   4. Each group will start with one of the following questions, with students listing as many things in their category as they can think of in the allotted time.
      1. What knowledge does an effective citizen need?
      2. What skills does an effective citizen need?
      3. What attitudes and dispositions does an effective citizen need?
      4. How should an effective citizen act?
   5. After about five minutes, the teacher will indicate that it is time to pass the poster to the next station. Groups will designate a person to pass the poster to the next group. The teachers should show students to whom they will pass. (Alternative: posters are spread out around the room and groups move from one to the next.)
   6. Once groups get their new question, students will review the brainstorm list of the previous group(s) and build on their ideas and add-ons. They will also judge which of the listed items are the most important, talk about the reasons for their judgment and put a star next to those items.
      1. The teacher monitors and supports groups as needed.
   7. This process continues until each group has added its ideas to each paper and each group is back at the question they started with. The last switch lets students see what others have added to the poster they started with).
   8. Groups choose one student to share the highlights of their poster with the rest of the class.
      1. Posters will be displayed in the classroom once the activity is completed.
      • As a possible accommodation: Display prepared posters around the classroom. Have students move around in groups to review the lists, highlighting the items they feel are the most important and discussing their rationale. Note that this may take less time.
      • As students share out, the teacher may point out or ask which of the three kinds of citizens the example highlights.

5.  Transition – connect student responses on the attributes of effective citizens (the legal definition as well as in the more generic sense, as in “member of community”) to the different ways in which people can take action. “When people become aware of problems in their communities, they often want to do something to make things better. There are 3 ways citizens can take action: private action (individuals, families, neighbors), civil society action (private and community organizations), government action or public policy The stand a government (local, state, federal, tribal) takes on a problem (service/ regulation).

6.  Inform students that they will be watching a Retro Report documentary video (11 minutes) that examines humans’ influence on water collection and drainage. As they watch, students should consider what examples, if any, are there of personally responsible, participatory and justice-oriented citizens. What attributes of effective citizens, if any, do they see? What examples, if any, do they see of private action, civil society action, or government action (“public policy”) to address the problem? You may want to show Tucson and India on a globe or map. Both are referenced in the video.

7.  Next, inform students that their task is to design a one-pager to synthesize and visually present the topic of rainwater harvesting in relation to the different kinds of citizens and attributes of effective citizens. Go over the directions for one-pagers (see #8). Let students know they may re-watch parts of the video as needed, as they have access to the link. Remind students that they have access to the transcript as well.

8. One-pagers allow students to connect words and images to “respond imaginatively while being brief and concise.” The process helps students tie concepts together and collapse information into the most important points.

1. 1. For more information, see A Simple Trick for Success with One-Pagers | Cult of Pedagogy
      Students should:
      1. use unlined white paper and colored pens, pencils, or markers for drawing; cut-outs from magazines or personalized computer images may also be used
      2. give the one-pager a title to reflect the content
      3. aim to fill the whole page
      4. include quotations, ideas, images, analysis, key names and dates, connections to other disciplines and connections to students’ lives.
   2. For increased scaffolding, consider:
      1. providing what the one-pagers should include at minimum (for example: three quotes, two graphic representations, a border decoration, a personal response)
      2. showing students some examples of one-pagers
      3. providing one-pager templates for students to choose from, as opposed to a blank page
      4. telling students which elements should go in which area of their templates
      5. providing sentence frames for their responses
   3. Give students time to work on their one-pagers in class.
   4. Have students brainstorm ways they could use their one-pagers.
      1. For example: help others understand problems and solutions, persuasion, display their posters.

Extension Activities:

1. Related lesson and activity: Harvesting the Rain
2. Retro Report’s Future of Water (Transcript)
3. Have students generate questions about water harvesting to investigate using the Question Formulation Technique (Right Question Institute).
4. Have students look into possible unintended consequences of water harvesting, like algae growth, contaminants and mosquitoes. One possible unintended consequence of rainwater harvesting could be the increase of mosquitoes. See Mosquito Control for Rainwater Harvesting Systems, N.C. State Extension Publications
   1. Rachel Carson’s Warning on D.D.T. Ignited an Environmental Movement lesson/activity

About the Authors:

Jennifer Bloom is the executive director of the Learning Law and Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan civic education organization. She earned a JD degree from the William Mitchell College of Law, a Master’s in Education at Harvard, and is a recipient of the American Bar Association’s Isidore Starr Award for Excellence in Law-Related Education.

Filiz Yargici is the education manager at Retro Report. Previously, she was a state specialist in K-12 social studies education and taught high school social studies for nearly two decades.

Standards

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies:

• D2.Civ.2.3-5. Explain how a democracy relies on people’s responsible participation, and draw implications for how individuals should participate.
• D2.Civ.6.3-5. Describe ways in which people benefit from and are challenged by working together, including through government, workplaces, voluntary organizations, and families.
• D2.Civ.10.3-5. Identify the beliefs, experiences, perspectives, and values that underlie their own and others’ points of view about civic issues.
• D2.Civ.14.3-5. Illustrate historical and contemporary means of changing society.
• D2.Eco.2.3-5. Identify positive and negative incentives that influence the decisions people make.
• D2.Geo.4.3-5. Explain how culture influences the way people modify and adapt to their environments.
• D4.7.3-5. Explain different strategies and approaches students and others could take in working alone and together to address local, regional, and global problems, and predict possible results of their actions.
• D2.Civ.7.9-12. Apply civic virtues and democratic principles when working with others.
• D2.Civ.14.9-12. Analyze historical, contemporary, and emerging means of changing societies, promoting the common good, and protecting rights.
• D2.Civ.12.9-12. Analyze how people use and challenge local, state, national, and international laws to address a variety of public issues.
• D2.Geo.4.9-12. Analyze relationships and interactions within and between human and physical systems to explain reciprocal influences that occur among them.

Common Core Literacy Standards:

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.