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Lesson: Ownership,
Respect, and Responsibility

Subjects

• Arts & Humanities
  --Language Arts
  --Literature
• Mathematics
  --Measurement
  --Statistics
• Social Studies
  --Civics

Grade

• K-2
• 3-5
• 6-8
• 9-12

Brief Description

Students learn to respect others' property by rating the severity of a variety of damaging acts.

Objectives

Students will

• recognize that other people's property needs to be respected, and that the use of property involves responsibility.
• understand that laws and rules protect personal property (individual property) and public property (property which is not owned individually).

Keywords

respect, property, responsibility, public, consequences, punishment

Materials Needed

• Those Terrible Toy-Breakers by David McPhail (Parents Magazine Press) or any other children's literature that correlates with damage done to property
• a set of tagboard thermometers or similar ranking scale
• a teacher questionnaire (included with lesson)

Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students use a tagboard "thermometer" to rate the severity of 15 statements describing situations in which a person damages the property of another.

Alternative idea: Provide students with a work sheet on which are drawn 15 thermometers with a scale of 1 to 10. Let students respond to each situation by coloring a thermometer on their work sheets.

Following are a few examples of the kinds of property-related damages introduced in this activity:

• Scribbling on a school wall.
• Smashing jack-o-lanterns on a neighborhood street.
• Trampling a flower garden while taking a shortcut home.

This lesson includes follow-up activities.
See the entire lesson at http://www.ccle.fourh.umn.edu/rulespocatello2.html.

Assessment

Students' understanding is evaluated throughout the lesson by teacher observations. Observation of the ranking students give will indicates students' understanding of this concept.

Lesson Plan Source

Civically Speaking (Minnesota Center for Community Legal Education)

National Standards

LANGUAGE ARTS: English
GRADES K - 12
NL-ENG.K-12.4 Communication Skills
NL-ENG.K-12.6 Applying Knowledge
NL-ENG.K-12.11 Participating in Society
NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills

MATHEMATICS: Measurement
GRADES Pre-K - 2
NM-MEA.PK-2.1 Understand Measurable Attributes of Objects and the Units, Systems, and Processes of Measurement
GRADES 3 - 5
NM-MEA.3-5.1 Understand Measurable Attributes of Objects and the Units, Systems, and Processes of Measurement
GRADES 6 - 8
NM-MEA.6-8.1 Understand Measurable Attributes of Objects and the Units, Systems, and Processes of Measurement
GRADES 9 - 12
NM-MEA.9-12.1 Understand Measurable Attributes of Objects and the Units, Systems, and Processes of Measurement

MATHEMATICS: Representation
GRADES Pre-K - 12
NM-REP.PK-12.3 Use Representations to Model and Interpret Physical, Social, and Mathematical Phenomena

SOCIAL SCIENCES: Civics
GRADES K - 4
NSS-C.K-4.2 Values and Principles of Democracy
NSS-C.K-4.5 Roles of the Citizen

GRADES 5 - 8
NSS-C.5-8.5 Roles of the Citizen
GRADES 9 - 12
NSS-C.9-12.5 Roles of the Citizen

Find more activities for teaching about respect on Education World's Martin Luther King Day holiday page.

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Last updated 1/12/2012