Implementation 2


Implementation 2

 

 

In my second year of college, I took a course called “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” The professor finished the class by stating “You now know more about the Charter than 95% of people in this country”. When I lived in BC a man once asked me: “Why does Langford have so many big box stores compared to Victoria?” According to CIVICINFOBC, the answer to that question is due to the fact that Langford only gets 18.49% of eligible voters casting their ballot in municipal elections (2018). Students need to learn how to vote, why voting is important, the division of powers within Government, the amending formula for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that international law is not law but an agreement between sovereign states. I don’t think civic literacy is taught well in schools because I only remember being lectured or taught historical facts in my primary years. I think that out of all the key subjects and 21st-century themes listed by Battelle for Kids, civic literacy stands out to me because of my Political Science background. 

To improve students' civic literacy skills, I will divide the class into teams and we will play the game Civilization 5. Students will need to keep journals and write about the political happening between each other’s countries. We will have our own class model United Nations. The class will make trade deals between countries. Students will learn that international trade and law are not laws but agreements between sovereign states. Students will also learn the different forms of governments through gameplay.

         To teach students about the importance of casting a ballot I will have a jar of jelly beans on the desk. I will ask each student to guess the number of jelly beans. We will go to other classrooms in the school and ask the other students to guess the number of jelly beans. Once we ask over 160 students, we will calculate the average number of guesses. The average number of jelly beans guessed by the students will equal the number of jelly beans in the jar. This phenomenon is called the Wisdom of the Crowd (BBC, 2011). This is a great lesson for teaching students why their vote matters.  

A few limitations and challenges could arise from implementing the two lessons above. The first lesson could be hard to implement because the Chrome Books that the schools have might not be powerful enough to run Civilization 5. Moreover, the game could be complicated for students under grade 5. Furthermore, students could gang up on another team's country and this could cause problems for relationships in the classroom. A skilled teacher could mod the game so that students' countries are placed far enough away from each other to make the game last a semester. The limitations for the jelly bean activity is that you could be disruptive to other teachers’ classrooms.

 Work Cited

BBC. (2011, August 15). BBC - The Code - The Wisdom of the Crowd [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOucwX7Z1HU&list=PL11E70446D4EC2C65

 

CIVICINFOBC. (2018). 2018 Voter Turnout Municipalities. Retrieved May 23, 2022, from https://www.civicinfo.bc.ca/electionreports/voter-turnout.php?year=2018

 

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