Civic ENGAGEMENT

ANCHOR RESOURCES:

🏛️Icivics has lots to offer: Civics curricula, which include lesson plans, games and “webquests,” which are projects that can be accomplished online. Games are engaging and can be played in Spanish or English.

Informational Resources

🏛️Facing History & Ourselves provides full lesson plans and resources to explore citizenship and civic infrastructure.

🏛️Annenberg Classroom focuses on the Constitution and includes over 65 videos on constitutional concepts from civil liberties and the death penalty to freedom of the press and immigration. It covers important supreme court cases and includes games, lesson plans, timelines, and a constitution guide.

🏛️Youth.gov (formerly FindYouthInfo.gov) was created by the Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs (IWGYP), which is composed of representatives from 21 federal agencies that support programs and services focusing on youth.

The American Political Science Association "Raise the Vote" project offers ideas for Civic Action Projects.

🏛️This PBS Newshour site is an aggregator with various lesson plans, learning tools and activities for learning about civic engagement.

Sample Projects

🏛️The Center for Digital Civic Engagement has simple civic action projects that can all be done virtually.

This Edutopia blog offers resources including segments on why we vote, challenges to voting, and expanding the right to vote. The link includes activities that could work as projects.

🏛️The Digital Civics Toolkit is a collection of resources for educators to support youth to explore, recognize, and take seriously the civic potentials of digital life. The Toolkit draws on the research and work of the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP). The Toolkit explores a range of civic opportunities and dilemmas via 5 modules focused on: Exploring Community Issues, Investigation, Dialogue, Voice, and Action.

🏛️PBL Works, Lifting Our Voices. In this project, students examine political speeches and propaganda that were historically effective in shifting societal perceptions on major social issues (civil rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, etc.). Student teams select a current political issue (local, state, federal) to investigate and engage with their peers in a Structured Academic Controversy to develop their ideas on the topic. Individual students use what they learn about rhetorical devices, argumentation, and the issue at hand to write and present a persuasive speech that will convince first time voters or other stakeholders of their stance. Sample topics might include mass incarceration, fracking, the electoral college, GMO labeling of foods, immigration policy, or any other issue of students’ choice.

🏛️After the article on the top of the page, The Youth Leadership Initiative provides is a list of projects related to voting, elections and civic engagement, with links to the resources needed to complete them.

🏛️These Street Law resources highlight projects on civic engagement that focus on online learning around government processes, voting and democracy.

Sample Projects/Instructional Resources

🏛️This website from Common Sense Media offers a collection of resources for educators to support youth to explore, recognize, and take seriously the civic potentials of digital life. The Toolkit explores a range of civic opportunities and dilemmas via 5 modules focused on: Exploring Community Issues, Investigation, Dialogue, Voice, and Action.