This lesson using The Walk by Winsome Bingham is intended to aid elementary students in cultivating citizenship mentors who model social change in their own areas. Students use the text to bridge the gap in seeing themselves as active citizens now as students and being molded into adult citizens. They can realize in both phases, they can impact their local communities. Students work together throughout the lesson to recognize fellow citizens and their contributions to their world through the active demonstrations of specific democratic ideals. While students engage in asking and answering questions posed to them and by them, they collaboratively explore individual leadership and activism and identify core civic ideals demonstrated in action by specific leader mentors.
Students construct their own knowledge regarding citizenship and the active demonstration of democratic ideals as they think critically, engage with classmates and community members, and demonstrate cross-curricular and social studies content knowledge and skills. The text serves as a catalyst to bridge students' ideas of activism in one area, like voting, to other examples historically and contemporarily of local leadership resulting in change.
Students engage in this lesson actively as they learn through connections to text, historical people and events, and current examples of community leadership. Students contemplate and discuss ideas like duties of citizenship and citizen leadership, as well as identify leader mentors they might learn from in their local area. Students expand ideas of community activism as they seek tangible examples in their contemporary world. They explore texts, make connections and create digital and audio accounts of first-hand accounts of individual activism.
In this lesson, elementary students are allowed the choice and the freedom to grapple with big ideas of what it means to be an active citizen, how to identify appropriate leader-mentors to watch and emulate, and how their own demonstration of leadership now and in the future serves as examples to other citizens and can create lasting change by leading through example. They will work together within and outside the classroom to note where opportunities for engagement in community and with others can occur. Students can begin to see themselves in current roles of active citizenship as they interview community leaders about their journeys from student-citizens to adult citizens active in demonstrating democratic ideals.
Book summary
A granddaughter and her grandmother take a walk together. Along their route, they connect with others in their community who want to walk with them toward their voting site. Together, they share a journey to demonstrate active citizenship and celebrate the hope found in democratic ideals actively demonstrated through civic practices.
NCSS standards
Individual Development and Identity
Civic Ideals and Practices
C3 framework
D2.Civ.2.K-2. Explain how all people, not just official leaders, play important roles in a community.
D2.Civ.14.K-2. Describe how people have tried to improve their communities over time.
D2.Civ.8.3–5. Identify core civic virtues and democratic principles that guide government, society and communities.
D2.Civ.10.3–5. Identify the beliefs, experiences, perspectives, and values that underlie their own and others' points of view about civic issues.
D3.3.3–5. Identify evidence that draws information from multiple sources in response to compelling questions.
Context
This lesson plan utilizes content requiring students to identify active citizenship in practice in their communities, realizing that all citizens can engage in democratic ideals at varying levels of leadership. Citizenship as an active endeavor positions students, themselves, to be active change makers. Looking at local leadership beyond only elected leadership helps students to reimagine what being a leader for others might look like in their own communities. Further, this helps students to identify ways in which active citizenship can be modeled and practiced by other citizens for students to internalize and to emulate. The aim is that, in turn, students might then model for others their own particular ideals as demonstrated through community action. In observing models for becoming a leader, students are asked to pinpoint and discuss specific ways active citizenship is defined and demonstrated and to see what individual leadership looks like in practice.
Disciplinary literacy skills as grounded in the practice of thinking like a historian are used throughout this plan. As students ask and answer questions, they are engaged in teacher-led and student-led pieces of inquiry. They are asked to do holistic thinking and to interview community leaders as they define leader attributes, democratic principles, and core civic ideals. Having students interview adults allows for many core literacy skills to be applied and assessed alongside social studies content and skills. This lesson's integrated approach to social studies centers social studies content and skills, but disciplinary literacy skills are also utilized as students communicate and learn with each other and with community members. The connection between themselves, their fellow citizens and their communities is explored as they think like historians in interviewing prior sources about their application of leadership and their own citizen-leader models.
Materials
The Walk by Winsome Bingham, illustrated by E. B. Lewis
Play-Doh or modeling clay
chart paper
markers
blank drawing paper
crayons
colored pencils
access to community leaders to interview in person or virtually
notebook paper and pencils (if not using technology for interviews)
recording equipment like phone or iPad if using technology for interviews (optional)
iMovie app or other tool to record audio and video for digital book (optional)
large construction paper and rings to make book (if not using technology)
Objectives
Students will identify and discuss core ideals of participatory democracy like voting and community action.
Students will ask and answer questions as they explore individual leadership.
Students will describe specific attributes that leaders possess as they aim to improve their communities.
Students will identify and interview community leaders.
Students will work cooperatively to collectively examine the attributes of community leaders.
Students will create a class book in relation to democratic principles and core civic ideals.
Students will identify leader models in their community that they may wish to emulate in becoming community leaders.
Procedures
Exploration.
Procedures:
Before reading.
Assign students to small groups and allow students to create and express ideas with modeling clay or Play-Doh.
After students have had sufficient time to explore, students will discuss afterward what they created and explain the terms “molding” and “modeling.”
The students will then share their ideas with the class as they receive notes from classmates about similarities and differences in their understanding.
The teacher may wish to chart or type answers.
The teacher may choose to offer explanations or to withhold them for later in the story.
Students will consider the following quote and its meaning,
“Leaders are not born. They're made through molding and modeling.”
Students will create a class chart of group ideas related to the quote.
The teacher will keep the ideas visible for revisiting later when the story is read.
The teacher will support the students and chart ideas, but not offer explanations to confirm or correct their statements.
The teacher will then introduce the text and ask students to examine the book cover and ask questions about what they might conclude about the book in relation to the prior exploration.
As students make suggestions, the teacher may choose to corroborate responses, clarify misconceptions or might reserve conversation and choose instead to allow all responses. If the latter is chosen, this permits the teacher to revisit the discussion while reading the text to affirm or ask for clarification during the reading.
Students could offer age-appropriate answers in the above discussions that relate to civic ideals, duties of citizens, citizenship, leadership, voting, learning from grandparents or older mentors, activism or ideas that the class may already know about these topics.
Development:
Before reading.
The teacher will ask the students to think of people they know in their community, statewide or nationally who are examples for others to follow. The students should think of leaders who might contribute positively to their community, state or world.
Students will draw pictures of their leaders. If creating digitally, students can collect images from electronic resources and create a file, slide or other digital representation.
During reading.
The teacher will read the book The Walk aloud.
While reading, the teacher will pause at varying chosen points to ask questions such as: Who is leading? Is anyone being molded? Is anyone modeling?
Students should begin to make connections from the prior group activities and provide evidence for those connections through the relationships in the story as they emerge.
Students should recognize that the quote they discussed earlier was directly from the story and comment as they hear it.
The teacher and students would revisit the quote together and discuss the students' idea chart from the earlier phase.
After reading.
Students should point out ways in which the story demonstrates leadership and shows ideals of being an active citizen.
Students should also comment on citizens in the story noticing and following positive contributions by their fellow citizens.
The teacher will ask students to look back at their drawings from pre-reading of leaders. They can add to, change or modify their drawings after reading their story if they wish. For example, perhaps students might add drawings of other people following their leader's example.
The students will then share their pictures of leaders with their classmates in small groups or in pairs.
Students should make comparisons with their partners from their pictures of leaders drawn to the ideas from the story. Perhaps they will indicate that one person can make a difference in their community. Students might offer that leaders do something others might like to try to make a change in their community. Students might mention that all people can be leaders for change in small or big ways.
The students will then share ideas they discussed together in their small groups or pairs and the teacher will guide and prompt as needed to support connections to leadership, activism, active citizenship and other relevant ideas.
The teacher will script the answers for the class in shared decision making of what should be added, removed and/or corrected from the original charts made prior to readings as students offer new relevant information learned from the text.
The students will connect the original quote, “Leaders are not born. They're made through molding and modeling,” to ideas in the story of the girl watching the changemakers in her community, including her grandmother.
The students should then discuss the quote and ideas surrounding it to their drawings of leaders.
Students should note how their leaders have made or are making positive contributions and how others might follow their modeling.
Students should further discuss specific contributions or attributes of their leaders that would allow them to serve as a model for others to follow to become leaders.
Expansion.
The teacher will begin by telling students they will practice being historians in this lesson as they interview and record ideas related to citizen leadership.
The teacher will ask students why historians might talk to leaders, ask questions of them and then record their responses.
Students should respond with thoughts related to the importance of recording ideas to know about people later on, the importance of hearing different people's ideas, the importance of understanding people better and the importance of learning from others' ideas and experiences.
If necessary, the teacher can do pre-work with the students if they do not have prior knowledge of an interview structure or conducting interviews.
The following steps could be used to model interviewing as a historian. If students are already familiar with interviewing, a teacher may choose to move to later steps where students conduct their own interviews without this prior work.
Familiarity and practice with interviewing can first occur by showing students pieces of videos of selected leader interviews available online.
The teacher will lead students in a discussion of what they saw from the video models.
Students should respond with ideas like: There weren’t any yes or no questions asked, so that the person being interviewed can explain their thoughts. The interviewer paused and gave time for the person being interviewed to respond. The interviewer did not interrupt the person as they answered. The interviewer only asked the most pertinent questions they wished to know so that the interview could be conducted in a reasonable amount of time.
The teacher may choose to create an anchor chart with students from their responses of ideas to remember when interviewing like a historian.
The teacher may then choose to have students plan for a class interview of a relevant school leader to practice elements of interviewing. For example, the school principal might be a good choice to practice these ideas with a familiar person.
As they plan this interview with the teacher and each other, support should be provided as to the appropriateness of questions, the selection of a reasonable number of questions, the method used to collect responses, the behaviors of an interviewer, and other relevant interview considerations.
The teacher and students should work together through the planning process and then invite their guest leader for an interview.
The teacher and students will take turns as they interview their leader, practicing the ideas from their prior work.
After the class interview has been conducted, a debrief should occur. The guest might stay for the debrief to provide insight from the interviewee's perspective or may leave.
The teacher and students will discuss what things were easy or difficult about being a historian who uses interviews and troubleshoot ideas that can be helpful to think about as they plan for future interviews to be conducted.
The teacher may wish to do more than one supported interview with their students, repeating the above steps for additional modeling prior to having students practice interviewing on their own.
After this extensive prior work and practice, students will engage in an interviewing project of a citizen leader. The teacher can decide whether the interview will be an independent, partnered or group project.
As the project begins, the teachers and students can negotiate all elements of the students' interview projects, such as the people interviewed, timeframe, number of questions, types of questions and other necessary components. The following directives, however, are ones that should be included in the interview to meet the objectives of the lesson.
In the interview, students must gather:
How does their individual citizen-leader impact their community, society and/or their government?
What projects does their citizen-leader choose to participate in and why?
Who are their citizen-leader's influences who might have helped mold them or served as a model of active citizen leadership?
The teacher will differentiate the ways in which students should record the data based on students' needs. Examples of collection methods are audio recording with full transcript, graphic organizer, essay, a Q&A sheet or other models. The teacher may choose to use some or all the methods for every student to complete or to allow different students to use different methods.
Students will be asked to share their interview data with other students. The teachers can select the students' method of sharing with the class to include reading from their collected data sheets or having students do a full summarized presentation on their leader to share with the class. Whatever methods of collection and dissemination are chosen, these should have been modeled in prior work with the concept of interviewing as a historian's tool.
As students present, teachers may choose to give directives to students as to what they should do during the presentation. The teachers may want students to practice listening respectfully, or they may wish to give students a recording sheet to collect information that they hear.
After hearing each student present, the teacher will ask the class to respond to the following questions:
How does this leader take action?
What do this leader's actions mean for you as a fellow citizen?
How might this leader model qualities for you to use in your own citizenship?
The presenting students and their classmates should respond to the questions after each presentation.
As the students answer, they should begin to note some common threads among all the leaders. The teacher may have students individually write responses, collect the ideas on a chart or record their ideas with a partner.
Students will then use those discussions and responses to create a digital and audio book together using each other's interviews as guides to discuss active individual and collective citizenship and leadership in communities.
The books may be created digitally or in hard copy form using any materials chosen that can be laminated or sent off to a company to bind.
The teacher can choose specific requirements regarding art materials, tech, creative elements, time allotted for book creation, who the book will be shared with, or any other aspects related to grade level standards.
Further, the teacher can decide if each student does one or multiple pages, or if the pages are created in groups. For the purposes of the lesson to be met, the pages should include at least the following content:
Ideas related to core civic values and democratic ideals, most leaders expressed
Examples of who leaders might look to for guidance or as models and why
Beliefs, experiences, perspectives and values leaders have in common or how they differ
The teacher will finally lead the students in a discussion about the actions of the granddaughter and grandmother in the story, The Walk, and have students compare that to the projects students have been creating.
The teacher will ask students to think about individual action for change, individual leadership, the way one person can impact others in a community and how leaders develop.
The teacher will ask students what the studied leader's actions mean for them as citizens and how the leaders might be models of citizen leadership for others.
Students can respond verbally or in writing, and within groups or individually. They should be able to respond in ways that discuss the ideas of active citizenship, learning from others and individuals helping make collective change for the good of a community.
Closure.
The teachers and students will again revisit the original quote from the story, “Leaders are not born. They're made through molding and modeling.”
Students should be able to explain ways in which everyday citizens can be models for others.
Students should be able to explain how the quote speaks to their own role as citizens who can demonstrate democratic ideals and discuss ways in which they can become leaders for others.
Assessment.
Exploration.
The teacher will informally evaluate student responses in Play-Doh group tasks and post-discussion related to the ideas of being molded or modeling citizenship.
The teacher will informally evaluate students' responses to questions about leaders and leadership that occur during whole group discussion.
The teacher will informally assess students' abilities to work cooperatively to ask and answer questions.
Development.
The teacher will assess individual students' drawings for relation to a leader who might model to others the importance of individual active citizenship.
The teacher will informally assess students' abilities to connect knowledge from the story to active citizen leadership and to specific attributes that leaders possess as they aim to improve their communities.
Expansion.
The teacher will formally assess students' leader interview projects based on the specific-decided parameters of the assignment. A rubric should be created measuring specific levels of completion for each and all areas of the interview portion that the students and teachers negotiate.
The teacher will formally assess students' individual contributions to the class book/digital book created using teacher-created rubrics specific to the needs of their students and specific parameters of the project.
Suggested extension activities
The book offers the perspective of a young girl looking up to her grandmother and others following along in connection with them. Students can list attributes that they wish to model for those in their community and offer a list of those who might be watching them as they engage in community efforts, who in turn might also be inspired to become leaders. Students will explain this cycle and create art that would explain this to others.
Students can engage with historical events where people have walked to display democratic ideals. They can map these efforts and provide group projects to explain individual actors and acts that have displayed leadership aimed at making their community and world a better place. (Some examples: Montgomery March, March on the Pentagon, The Women's March, March for Our Lives, 2020 Racial Justice Protests, “No Kings” Protests.)
Students can engage with county and local officials in charge of voting in their areas. They can discuss voting districts and the issues that arise with them historically and contemporarily.
Students can map key events on a class timeline after researching pivotal historical moments in the history of voting rights in America.
Additional references and web links
Books:
Lillian's Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by Jonah Winter and illustrated by Shane W Evans.
This children's picture book conveys historical points related to the centuries-long efforts for equality in voting rights from the viewpoint of an older African American woman on her way to cast her vote.
Show Up and Vote by Ani DiFranco and illustrated by Rachelle Baker. This children's picture book aims to explore the feelings a young girl has in connection with her own individual citizenship and to her community as she goes to vote for the first time alongside her mother.
Electronic Resources:
Voters and Voting Rights | Presidential Elections and Voting in U.S. History | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress.
Library of Congress. (2024, November 16.) Voters and voting rights. https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/elections/voters/
This site provides primary sources and lessons that offer explorations into how people in history have engaged in efforts to pursue equality in voting rights in America.
NPR. (2024, November 16.) Special series-picture this: Granny is going on “The Walk” to the polls – and the whole town is invited. https://www.npr.org/2024/10/25/nx-s1-4674060/the-walk-winsome-bingham-e-b-lewis
This six-minute audio file featuring the book's author and illustrator explains the book used in this lesson and explores its illustrations through vignettes shared about the text's creation.
