This year in 8th grade Civics & Economics, I started with the goal of having potentially multiple projects to allow students the opportunity to explore topics that were interesting/important to them. To start the year my students had a wide variety of topics they selected to pursue. Nationwide issues included gender equity, police reform, and environmental issues. Local issues include school overcrowding, public safety, and increasing recreational opportunities for young people. In the virtual environment for the final project students are creating an informational message to raise awareness about their chosen topics.
Teacher: Dana Parks
Students: 8th grade students in Civics & Economics class at George Washington Middle School
Driving Question: How can you have a positive impact on your community?
Standards of Learning:
- CE.1 The student will demonstrate skills for historical thinking, geographical analysis, economic decision making, and responsible citizenship
- CE.3 The student will apply social science skills to understand the foundations of American constitutional government
- CE.4 The student will apply social science skills to understand the foundations of American constitutional government
The 5Cs:
- Citizenship Skills: Students are engaging with topics that are important to their communities
- Critical and Creative Thinking: Students need to apply critical and creative thinking in their creation of potential solutions to their chose topics and how to convey that information to the public
- Collaboration: Students worked together on the creation of their final informational presentation and along the way with other students working on similar topics to share resources
- Communication Skills: Students needed to effectively communicate with each other during the project along with coming up with a way to communicate the important points of their projects to the public as part of the final project