Unit Web Activity Lesson Plans

Unit 5: Family Law
Protecting the Children

Overview

This lesson is designed to help students learn about what the federal government, state governments, and private organizations do to protect the welfare of children.

Correlation to Textbook

This lesson correlates to Unit Five, Chapter 32: Parents and Children and Chapter 35: Government Support for Families and Individuals in the Street Law textbook.

Correlations to the National Standards for Civics and Government

III.B.1. The institutions of the national government: Students should be able to evaluate, take, and defend positions on issues regarding the purposes, organization, and functions of the institutions of the national government.

III.C.3. Major responsibilities of state and local governments: Students should be able to identify the major responsibilities of their state and local governments and explain how those governments affect their lives.

Objectives

At the conclusion of this lesson, students will be able to:

• Identify how the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services addresses issues of child protection.
• Describe state resources available for the protection of children.
• Identify how private organizations support children, families, and state and local governments.
• Express and defend an opinion about the most important issue that needs to be addressed regarding children.

Before You Teach This Lesson

1. Before you take your students to the computer lab or assign this lesson for independent research, go through it yourself to make sure that it suits your purposes and that all the links work.
2. Decide if you want your students to complete all steps. You may decide to direct students to look for specific topics or to divide the class and assign different groups to look for different topics.
3. Determine if you want your students to look at only your home state, or if you want them to compare your state with a neighboring state.
4. This lesson is designed for use in a computer lab, to enable all students to gather their own information. You may decide to make it a pairs or group activity, so that students work together to answer the questions.

Lesson Plan

1. Review the lesson outcomes with students.
2. If a Resource Person is helping to co-teach this lesson, introduce him or her and explain how you will work together.
3. Give students their directions so that they understand what information they need to research. Tell them to take notes on what they find so that they will be prepared to share this information with other students in the class.
4. Have students begin the Web-based lesson and proceed through the steps you chose.
5. When they have gathered all of their information, have them discuss their ideas either with a partner or with the whole class.
6. As they share the information they found, encourage them to discuss whether they think their issues are the most important ones for the American people to discuss. This conversation will lead them to develop a critical understanding of the issues they will need to write the reflection essay.
7. Have the students write the reflection essay and turn it in to you.

Suggestions for Using Resource People

Contact your local department of child protective services to find a children's advocate. Ask the advocate to co-teach with you and speak to your students about child protection issues.

Timing of Lesson

This lesson is designed for one 90-minute block class or two 45-minute class periods. You can do the computer lab section of the lesson in one 45-minute class period. The other half of the lesson should be the discussion and pre-writing session. Depending on how much discussion you want before the students start their essays, you may need extra time.