Responsibility and Community Service
Grade Level:
Elementary and Middle
Overview:
This lesson explores how groups of people (or animals) come together to solve community problems. Students will identify a variety of personal responsibilities and civic responsibilities from a set of pictures in order to get a better understanding of what responsibility means. Students will understand that citizens in the United States have a responsibility to help others.
Time Needed:
1 class period
Objectives
During your session, students will:
- Discuss how students and citizens have responsibilities to their schools and communities as well as to themselves and their families.
Materials Needed:
How Would You Help This Community? Handout.
Fiction or nonfiction book about animals or people helping others (not themselves or family members)
Suggested Books:
The Streets Are Free by Kurusa.
The Good Egg, Jory Johnson
Recess Queen, Alexis O’Neill
Procedure
As needed throughout, define terms for students on the board:
- citizen
- community
- responsibility
- service
Procedure
- Read a story to students about animals or people coming together to help others. Alternatively, create a story about children not learning at school, children being excluded by others at school, violence, pollution, or littering-and let students act it out and then suggest ways to solve or reduce the problem.
- Ask children to volunteer people or places that help people, such as the hospital, the child-care center, and the nursing home. Explain that everyone in a community can help those in need as these places do. Ask students what problems they know about in their own school or in their community. Tell students that you are not asking about problems in their own homes.
- Tell students that in our country, each citizen (person who is a member of the country) has certain responsibilities. One responsibility is to help solve problems that the country has.
- Write the word responsibility on the board and ask students what this word means. Explain that responsibility is something that one is supposed to do. Ask students to identify some responsibilities they may have. Examples could include feeding the family pet, cleaning their room, etc. Explain that each is a responsibility that people have to themselves and their families.
Ask students to write other personal responsibilities on the Personal Responsibility Handout . - Explain that a civic responsibility is one that people have to their community and country because they are members or citizens of the United States. Examples include voting, volunteering to help the community, etc. Students may write others on the Civic Responsibility Handout.
Optional/Extension Activities
You might wish to follow up with additional lessons. Perhaps walk with students through the playground and lunch room, having them look for problems in the school. Students could be asked to draw a picture of any problems that they saw, or any problems that they know about at the school. They could talk as a large group about what they might be able to do to help with the problems, or do some role-plays about the problem and about their proposed solutions. They could also make posters about the problem and their solution and hang the posters in the hallways, or talk to other classes about solving a problem.
A final step would be to have students vote on which project(s) to undertake, prepare them for doing the project, and let them implement their project (with guidance). Then plan a recognition event for students.
Adapted from the ABA handbook Serving the Community.
National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, National Council for the Social Studies