Lesson focus

  • Respect
  • Responsibility
  • Freedom
  • Integrity
  • Understanding, tolerance and inclusion
  • Care and compassion

Expectations and goals

  • Students to understand the concept of being a good citizen
  • Students to create a School Citizen’s pledge that demonstrates conceptual understanding

Learning experiences

Classroom Ideas

  1. Introduce the students to the concept of citizenship and ask them to explore and develop ideas on what citizenship is.
  2. Provide students with access to Create the recipe (Resource 16 below) and ask them to complete by:
    1. Creating the recipe of ‘what makes a good citizen’
    2. Identifying the ingredients (characteristics)
    3. Complete the recipe card with ingredients and instructions
  3. Ask students to present their recipe as a movie, poster, song, multimedia presentation, rap song, poem, speech, or as a play.
  4. Display all of the recipe cards to the class.
  5. Provide students with access to Ballot box (Resource 17 below) and ask each student to rank what they perceive to be the top three characteristics of a good citizen.
  6. Create a ballot box and a voting booth. Provide each student with three voting cards. Ask them to write their top three characteristics of a good citizen on the cards and post in the ballot box.Tally the results to form the class consensus.
  7. Ask the class if anyone has ‘become’ an Australian citizen and explore what was required of them.
  8. Ask the students to research the requirements of becoming an Australian citizen.
  9. Invite students to create their own School Citizen’s pledge using information they have learnt about Australian citizenship and the characteristics of being a good citizen.
  10. Conduct a ‘gallery walk’ with the class before discussing the students’ creations. Identify the students’ rights and privileges involved.
  11. Hold a class discussion exploring the topics:
    1. What would our society would be like if we didn’t have clear views of what a good citizen is?
    2. How does Crime Stoppers encourage good citizenship?
    3. Which one of my values links to one of the Crime Stoppers campaigns?
ClassROOM IDEAS: Extension
  1. Create a Class pledge. Group negotiation skills.
  2. How can citizens individually or collectively influence Crime Stoppers?
  3. Create ‘My citizen footprint’. What does this mean?
  4. Reflective journal – What did I learn?
  5. Explore and consolidate characteristics of a good citizen. Access the digital content below through Department of Education portal (Resources tab) or through Scootle. Enter the resource ID that is in brackets:
    1. Having opinions on issues: is this good citizenship? (M006965)
    2. I Think … – All together now (R6076)
    3. Ian Kiernan (R12020)
    4. Take a vote: democracy (L1032)
    5. Playground rules (L949)
    6.  Discovering democracy: getting things done (L9525)
    7. Your rules: in the park (L6351)
    8. Neighbourhood charter (L950)
    9. Your charter: outside the school (L6354)

Lesson focus questions

  1. Discuss and explore the concept of a citizen and what a “good” citizen really is.
  2. What are the requirements to become an Australian citizen?
  3. Forecast what our society would be like if we didn’t have clear views of what a good citizen is?
  4. Does Crime Stoppers encourage good citizenship?
  5. How can citizens individually or collectively influence Crime Stoppers?
  6. What would society be like if we didn’t have clear views of what a good citizen is?

AssessmEnt tasks

Students to:

  1. Create and present a recipe of ‘what makes a good citizen?’
  2. Create and present a digital story of the ‘School Citizen’s pledge’

Download resources and tools

Printable lesson plan [Download Year 7, Lesson 6 plan]

Resource 16: Create the recipe [Download Resource 16]

Resource 17: Ballot box [Download Resource 17]