Civic Participation, American Principles, and Citizenship

The through-line

What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States, and what comes with that title?

Content overview

In this unit, students explore the meaning and importance of civics and examine why it is essential to study. They compare citizenship in the American constitutional democracy with membership in other forms of government, define what it means to be a citizen of the United States — including the rights, duties and responsibilities that accompany citizenship — and investigate the naturalization process, its historical development, and current immigration issues facing the nation.

How to use the lesson pages

• Eight lessons, each teaching one concept: 1 the purpose of government through Hobbes and Locke, 2 types of government, 3 a comparative WebQuest and checkpoint, 4 immigration trends and census data, 5 the Immigration Mythbusters project, 6 paths to citizenship, 7 duties and responsibilities, and 8 unit review and test. The source page's own header estimates the unit at about eight days, which is where it lands once each resource is taught once.
• The source page numbers ten blocks, labels two of them "Day 8", and has no "Day 7" at all. Lessons here are numbered sequentially by the order the content actually runs, so the page's day labels do not map onto these lesson numbers.
• Every lesson offers three tracks — Honors, Standard, Foundational — selectable on the page. All three share the same objective and the same key questions and run the full period; what changes is scaffolding, pace, and how much text a student handles alone. Foundational reaches the same destination by a different road. The checkpoint quiz on Lesson 3 and the unit test on Lesson 8 are identical across tracks — with one source-given exception: the unit test document itself includes an Honors essay.
• Each resource has exactly one home. The source taught the Types of Government notes on three separate days, the Paths to Citizenship deck on three, and the "Coming to America" article on four. Teaching each once is what turns ten labelled days into eight lessons.
• There are no dates anywhere in this unit. The source carried "Due Friday", "Test - Unit 1 - Friday" and "Binder Check Wednesday" on days that contradicted one another; the recurring assignments survive without their days, and pacing is the teacher's to set.
• Standards on these pages come from the source's own list, which is unusually good for this unit — the page prints six codes with full text. Two cautions. Day 1's objective cites CL.C&G.3.4, which the page never defines, so it is not used here. And this page defines CL.C&G.3.2 as how citizenship and naturalization have changed over time, while the Unit 3 page defines the same code as comparing strategies used to address discrimination — the two pages disagree, and Units 2 and 3 were built on the Unit 3 wording. Worth reconciling against the official standards document.