Civic Action Project (CAP) Curriculum: Lessons
CAP is designed to support educators in moving students from learning through lessons to learning in action.
You will first teach two simple lessons that enable students to start their own CAP projects. The next three lessons will help students focus the scope of their projects and connect them to public policy. The final two lessons get students doing civic actions, reflecting on their civic learning, and communicating their findings to others.
Core Lessons (High School and Middle School)
CAP lessons provide students with key content and skills they need to be able to choose an issue and begin taking civic actions. The lessons embed Planners that guide students through their projects and links to the CAP Toolkit to help students with civic actions.
Lesson 1: Citizenship Brainstorm
Students are introduced to the Civic Action Project (CAP) and create a profile of citizenship that reflects the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and actions that they believe are important for effective citizenship in their communities.
Lesson 2: What’s Your Issue
Students choose their CAP issue, form civic action groups, and complete the CAP Proposal Planner.
Lesson 3: Exploring Causes & Effects
Narrowing the focus of their CAP project will help students choose and complete effective civic actions. Students will meet in their CAP groups to identify specific causes or effects of their CAP issues and complete the Thinking It Through Planner (I).
Lesson 4: Public Policy and Your Issue
Students work in small groups to learn what public policy is and how it relates to their civic action projects before completing the Thinking It Through Planner (II).
Lesson 5: Evaluating Public Policy
Students are introduced to policy analysis by examining policy goals, pros, and cons, and people involved in real-world case studies.
Lesson 6: Taking Civic Action
Students brainstorm civic actions before learning about the Montgomery Bus Boycott as a case study on building a constituency. At the end of the lesson, CAP group will record their next steps by completing a Civic Action Planner.
Lesson 7: Reflect & Report
Students complete the Reflect & Report Planner to share what they learned about the importance of civic engagement and to explore options for sharing what they’ve learned with a larger audience.
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Supplemental Lessons
These lessons to be used at the educator’s discretion, provide additional skill-building and U.S. government content as students continue their projects.
- Civic Action Survey provides students with an opportunity to discuss and examine the importance of surveys to measure public opinion about their CAP problem or issue. They will learn about the types of questions that should be included in a survey and then convene in their civic action groups to determine the types of questions as the basis for their own civic action survey.
- Persuading introduces students to the art of persuasion. First, they read about and discuss the three types of persuasion: logos, ethos, and pathos. Then students prepare two-minute persuasive talks on why the issue that they have chosen to address in CAP is important. Finally, in pairs, students present and critique one another’s talks.
- Building Constituencies introduces students to the importance of gaining support to impact public policies. First, students complete a brief reading about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Next, they examine documents created during the boycott and identify the civic actions taken to help build constituencies. Finally, in small groups, students brainstorm how they can get support for their CAP issue.
- Persuading Policymakers informs students that legislative and executive bodies often hold public hearings and how students can make effective presentations at these hearings. First, students read about public hearings and techniques for making presentations at these hearings. Then students role play a city council and people appearing before it attempting to persuade policymakers on hypothetical issues.
Economics and Public Policy
In this lesson, students first discuss making decisions in terms of trade-offs and opportunity costs. Then, students read and discuss a short article on doing cost-benefit analyses, using the minimum wage as a case study. In small groups, students conduct their own cost-benefit analysis of policy proposals that addresses local issues.
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Key Resources
Planners
The CAP Planners guide students through the processes of choosing a problem, taking civic actions, and preparing a report on their CAP project. The CAP Planners are aligned to Common Core State Standards for writing in history/social studies. Students also keep track of sources they used throughout their CAP project. For each Planner page the students write and organize new information:
- Proposal: Students prepare a proposal to persuade you that the problem/issue they want to work on is worthy of a long-term project.
- Thinking it Through: Students analyze causes/effects and propose their first civic action for your approval.
- Civic Action: Students report on their last civic action, track the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they gained, and propose their next civic action for your approval. (Most teachers assign at least four Civic Action Planners.)
- Reflect & Report: Students discuss the civic actions they took and the impact they made on their selected problem/issue, reflect on their own learning.
CAP Toolkit
The CAP toolkit contains handouts that students can use to implement their Civic Action Project. It includes helpful information on how to use the media, influence policy, and research an issue to better understand it. Each handout is a stand-alone discrete civic action.
CAP for AP US GoPo
Core lessons provide students with key content and skills they need to begin work on their CAP, which will help them meet The College Board’s “applied civics project” requirement. All of these lessons also address AP U.S. Learning Objectives and Essential Knowledge requirements, as well as some key Disciplinary Practices and Reasoning Processes.
- Civic Action Survey provides students with an opportunity to discuss and examine the importance of surveys to measure public opinion about their CAP problem or issue. They will learn about the types of questions that should be included in a survey and then convene in their civic action groups to determine the types of questions as the basis for their own civic action survey.
- Persuading introduces students to the art of persuasion. First, they read about and discuss the three types of persuasion: logos, ethos, and pathos. Then students prepare two-minute persuasive talks on why the issue that they have chosen to address in CAP is important. Finally, in pairs, students present and critique one another’s talks.
- Persuading Policymakers informs students that legislative and executive bodies often hold public hearings and how students can make effective presentations at these hearings. First, students read about public hearings and techniques for making presentations at these hearings. Then students role play a city council and people appearing before it attempting to persuade policymakers on hypothetical issues.
- Reflect & Report: Students discuss the civic actions they took and the impact they made on their selected problem/issue, reflect on their own learning.
Economics and Public Policy
View a snapshot of How CAP Core Lessons Align with AP U.S. GoPo
For more information about what the lessons could accomplish and look like in your class, take a look at our webinar and presentation.
Lessons for Teaching AP US GoPo
Required Documents & Supreme Court Cases
- If Men Were Angels: Teaching the Constitution with the Federalist Papers
- Brown v. Board of Education
- McCulloch v. Maryland
- Schenck v. U.S.
- “Elections, Money, and the First Amendment” (Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission)
- Wisconsin v. Yoder
Pathways to Civic Action Project
Civics is everywhere! CAP can enhance course content in many disciplines by providing inquiry-based real-world connections.
“Pathways” are sets of lessons on a topic that dovetail and lead students to CAP. This helps teachers embed CAP in their courses, Teachers can also go straight to the CAP lessons without any pathway.
(Red: The Democracy Project (TDP) lessons, Green: Aligned with science standards)
Please note: For the duration of the DOE grant, we will house TDP on the Rise platform, AND we will post the TDP pathways on the CAP microsite.
