It Takes a Village

Heather Jackson09/09/2009

Social Studies Standard 2- Civics & Government

• Indicator: K.2.4-Roles of Citizens: Give examples of how to be a responsible family member and member of a group

• Taken From: http://dc.doe.in.gov/Standards/AcademicStandards/StandardSearch.aspx

• Link to activity:http://www.indianastandardsresources.org/files/soc/ss_k_2_4_b.pdf

Definitions• Responsible: a value that allows someone to reflect

and manage the consequences of their actions• Citizen: a member of a particular social, political, or

national community• Village: a small community or group of houses in a

rural area, larger than a hamlet and usually smaller than a town, and sometimes incorporated as a municipality.

• Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsible

Background Information• “The world...universally outgoing, conceptually unbounded, the planet

dynamically, synergistically and organically one with itself and the cosmos.”

• “Citizenship...the restrictive rights and duties within a given social structure.The two words together seem paradoxical.”

• "You can educate either the citizen or the man," wrote Thoreau. Yet in their union lies the potential success of the human species; in their non-union lies the demise of a fatally-flawed creature which could not overcome its self- imposed global anarchy.”

• “This is the perennial mystery of the conceptual "joining" the perceptual. How and where does spirit indwell in the body? World citizenship today implies the joining of the perennial wisdom of humankind with up-to-the-minute geo-political and geo-technical reality.”

• Taken from: http://www.worldservice.org/wcd.html

What does it mean to be a responsible citizen?

• Tell the students the definition of responsible• Tell the students the definition of

citizen• Discuss what a responsible citizen

is.

Read the Book

• Tell the students that you are going to read a book to them and that they need to look for characters that are responsible.

• Read the book, It Takes a Village by Jane Cowen-Fletcher

Everyone’s Responsibility pt. 1

• Remind the students of what responsible and citizen means.

• “Were any of the characters in the book responsible citizens in any way?”

• Discuss with the students about the characters.

• Prompt the students by asking :Why do you think that character is a responsible citizens?

Everyone’s Responsibility pt 2

• Reread the book having the students read the parts that repeat in the story

• Create a list of responsible characters in the story.

• Name characters not on the list and ask the students whether the character acted responsibly or not

• Read the list

Everyone’s Responsibility pt 3

• “These characters were all responsible in the same way. Did these characters take care of themselves, the other citizens, or the town’s things?”

• Discuss the question with students

Resources• Books– Cowen-Fletcher, Jane. (1994). It Takes a Village.

Scholastic books• Websites– World Government of World Citizens• http://www.worldservice.org/wcd.html

– Wikipedia• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsible