Chapter 16: Supporting “Lived Civics”: Taking Informed Action in a Fourth-Grade Classroom

Early in the school year, Mrs. Kirkham kicked off the “issues journals’’ to her fourth-grade class by asking students to brainstorm groups in their community who have been marginalized, discriminated against, or silenced. The students made an initial list from individual post-its and then grouped the post-its to articulate groups of people, including but not limited to ones to which they belong who have faced discrimination. The narrowed groups and topics included: drug abuse/addition, poverty, disabilities, language bias, and smoking. The students each voted individually vote for their top three issues and then were placed into one of the five groups around the chosen issues. The final goal was to support students, by the end of the year, in taking action on a public issue of their choice. Mrs. Kirkham leveraged “issues journals” as a way to connect issues her students see in their communities to her big standards of the year in Indiana, across subject areas, including: