What is Civics???

Chapter 11 in the textbook discusses civics and how to teach civics in elementary school. To start off, let's ask ourselves, "what really is civics?" Civics is the study of rights and duties in citizenship, or things and activities that we as people must fulfill in society. To effectively teach civics in elementary school, we can first teach children about how our government works and the roles that we play as American citizens so that everybody has a part in society. As American citizens, we all have natural rights, or rights that come naturally to us as people. These rights are given to us by our government and in return for these rights, each person in society has to fulfill their duty. In a classroom setting, a teacher can give out jobs to each student in the class such as line leader, door holder, messenger, etc. to mimic how each person in society has a specific responsibility and role to play that aids us in functioning properly as a whole.

These books are great starting points when teaching kids about civics to jumpstart lessons that dive in deeper to the topic.