Involving Students in Learning to be a Good Citizen

Hi, today I’m going to talk about one way I teach social studies to my kindergarten students. I’m going to work on a citizenship lesson, and our topic would be, how can I be a good citizen? So, you can either do this on a chalk board, or a large piece of paper is preferable, or a large dry erase board. And at the top I have, how can I be a good citizen written down. And what we’re going to work on is make, generating a list of ideas about what a good citizen does. Okay, and so, some of the questions I talk, have with my students are, I’ll ask the question what is a good citizen? And I’ll kind of define it for them. And then we talk about some things that they do. So, what does a good citizen do? I also ask and talk about how they help our communities? Why they are important to our communities? And, how they make us better? All of this is helping to promote oral language development, and what we’re going to do is, we’re going to save the list that we generate to do a writing activity that goes along with it. And this will also connect to some classroom behavior management activities as well. So, what we do is we’re going to make a list, and I’ve started one here that you can look at. We write it up on the board, how can I be a good citizen? And then, we’re having the discussion with the kids, and we’re making, adding things to our lists. Like I can follow rules. I can follow the laws. I can make good choices. I can work hard, and I can help others. So, after you have that discussion, the kids can do a drawing of something that they can do to be a good citizen. How they can help promote their community? And so, this is just a little example, we have the title, “How to be a good citizen,” and we start it with “I can,” and this child drew, made a drawing about planting some flowers, and that’s how she helps their community, and that’s how she’s being a good citizen. So, after the kids do their drawings an important part is to have them share. So, you can have them either share with a partner, or share to the whole group and talk about what it is they’re doing to be a good citizen. The next thing that you can do is you can help connect this to your classroom management and behavior plans for your students. So, this is one list, this is another list, and if you keep your list posted in your classroom or in the area that you’re teaching, it’s a good reference point for them. So, if they’re perhaps not being good listeners or not making good choices you can ask them can you tell me if you are being a good citizen? Are you working on being a good citizen? What can you do to be a good citizen? Can you make a different choice so that you can be a good citizen in our classroom? So, those are a couple of things I do, to teach citizenship in my classroom. Thank you.