By Dean Kloss
February 3, 2015
Over the last four months, I’ve been part of a team of teachers who are helping to develop curriculum materials for teachers in New York State. The project will result in the publication of 84 C3 style inquiries. The inquiries will be open source and published here on C3 Teachers! My role in the project has been to provide feedback on the inquiries, and pilot selected inquiries in my classroom.
I just taught my 1st grade class one of those inquiries focused on citizenship. The inquiry had been just been developed, it was in draft form, and I was eager to try it out. Just like any teacher trying something new, I had concerns about what I was to teach. The concepts and goals presented in the inquiry are very large and complex, and my students are so young.
First Grade is such a unique year in a child’s life. In the ten months of 1st grade, children begin to acquire the basics of the foundational skills they will need for the rest of their time in school. While the steps are small, they are crucial. The rights and responsibilities of citizenship are essential to a student’s understanding of democracy. We are laying the groundwork for their role as participants in civic life – this initial exposure has a significant effect on their understanding of the role of citizens in a democracy. All this with a class of 20 young people who only learned their letters a few months ago, still believe in the tooth fairy, and need their coats zipped for them.
At times my students are great. They can be focused and work at a level far beyond their years. Then there are other times when they are…well, like 6 year-olds! They can go from one ‘place’ to another in the blink of an eye. So, I was very interested in how introducing them to these citizenship topics would go. Specifically, I was looking to see my children’s ability to follow the complex ideas that were being presented, how developmentally appropriate the pace of the material was, and the effectiveness of the resources.
I presented the introductory material and the lesson for first supporting question on the same day. Following the outline of this information pretty closely, my 20 students seemed to grasp onto the concept of what a citizen is fairly easily. They were able to see how they belong to and are citizens of different groups in their lives and what that involves. Distinguishing between rights and responsibilities did not go as well—that concept seemed a bit fuzzy to them, which may very well have been due to the way I presented the material.
In order for a young person to understand an idea like citizenship, a good lesson needs to include just the right amount of foundational material that allows for subsequent discussion and elaboration. I found that the inquiry provided relevant, kid-friendly examples that were appropriate for their level. It transitioned well into our subsequent conversation about the meaning of citizenship. The order and appropriateness of the activities that followed were well sequenced and complementary.
The inquiry also flowed well with my regular classroom practices. My students are used to our doing work on charts and organizers, and this inquiry included lots of helpful organizers. I knew that the students would have no problem identifying the key ideas in the sources. Which is to their credit, but also speaks to the appropriateness and effectiveness of the material created for this inquiry unit. My most challenging 1st Grade class was able to begin to understand what it means to be a citizen. And that’s no small thing!
