Do Your Students Know Important U.S. National Leaders?

Kirsten 0:09

This is the social studies teacher podcast, a show for busy elementary teachers looking for fun and engaging ways to easily add social studies into their classroom schedule without feeling overwhelmed or pressed for time. I'm Kirsten of the Southern teach, an educator and mom who is passionate about all things social studies. I love sharing ideas and strategies that are low prep and easy to implement. So let's dive in together.

Kirsten 0:47

Kirsten 1:44

So it is important that students understand government leaders for several reasons. Number one, it empowers citizens, knowing who leads our country and what they do helps students feel connected to the government and inspires them to participate civically. It also, number two, builds historical context. Leaders are often at the center of historical events, even if it's happening right now, and it gives them a framework to understand the past and its impact on the present and future. And another reason why it's important is that it helps find role models, the stories of our leaders offer examples of courage, perseverance and leadership, and maybe even lessons that might be learned from how they led. And it motivates students to pursue their own goals. Maybe they want to do better or be better, or also follow in that position or run for Congress, you never know what your students will do in the future.

Kirsten 2:46

So this scavenger hunt idea activity is designed for students in third through fifth grade to explore the branches of US government as well as identify key leaders. Have everybody work either individually or in pairs on a computer with internet access, you can have them write down the answers on a worksheet with the questions I mentioned. So let's go into the first part of this. The first step is to have your students go to the official white house website, www.whitehouse.gov and answer these questions, very simple questions. The first question, Who is the current president of the United States? Number two, who is the current vice president? And then, if applicable, who are the first lady or first gentleman, and who is the second lady or second gentleman? So you would want to make sure they answer those questions. That's step number one. They're figuring out who is at the head of the executive branch, and that's important to make sure to mention. The second step is on the same website. You're going to have them click on the cabinet section on the White House website, and then they are going to find the answers for the cabinet in the executive branch Question number one, who is the first person in line to become president if something happens to the President? This is a very, super important one. The Vice President is always first in line. Who is the Secretary of State? That's the second question. These are the people in charge of handling our foreign affairs. Who is the Secretary of the Treasury? They are in charge of our nation's money. Who is the Secretary of Defense? This is the person who leads our military. And question number five, who is the Attorney General? They are the top lawyer for the US. And then the sixth question, how many total members are in the president's cabinet? All right, that is Part Two, we learn the cabinet. Now we're going into the Senate. We're heading over to another website, so they're going to be doing some sleuthing on their specific senators in their state, wherever state you live in. So you're going to have them go to www.senate.gov/states and you're going to have them figure out Number one, what are the names of the two senators representing your state? And the second part, what political party does each senator belong to, Democrats or Republicans? So they're listing the two senators that represent your state. And then what political party are they. Are they Democrat, or are they Republican? That is step number three. That's all they do for that one. And lastly, they're going to discover who their representative is. And so you will have them - this is a long URL, but I'll make sure to have all these URLs in the show notes. You're going to have them go to the House of Representatives website, which is house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative and you're going to have your students type in the address of your school or their home address to find the congressional district that they are related or where they're you know what the congressional district is for that area, wherever your school is or wherever their home is. So you're going to have them answer these questions once they type in the address number one, who is your US representative? Question number two, what congressional district do they represent in your state? It's going to be some type of number. Might be the 34th district or 8th district. And then question number three, what political party is your representative affiliated with? Are they Democrats, or are they Republicans, or are they another party? Democrats or Republicans are usually the main parties, but there might be an exception, all right, so that is a fourth part. Something to mention is for parts three and four, you want to make sure that they know that this is part of the legislative branch. And then, as mentioned before, for steps one and two, they are learning about the executive branch, who the national leaders are.

Kirsten 7:27

All right. Bonus round, have students research a leader that piqued their interest when they were doing the scavenger hunt, they can find fun facts or write a biography, or even create a timeline of their accomplishments. And another idea is to have students create a Government Gazette newspaper with articles about different parts of the government they learned about, what did they learn about the legislative branch? What did they learn about the executive branch? And some additional tips of this scavenger hunt, like implementing it in general, adapt the difficulty level of the questions based on grade level. Maybe, if it's too much for them to go to multiple websites, have them just focus on one website for one day. Maybe the second day, you can find out who the senators are, and then the third day, you can learn about representatives. And also, another tip, use a worksheet to keep track of the answers, or have students record the information in a creative way. The great thing about this is that I actually have this activity completely done for you and laid out, and it is in my citizenship of the US unit. So this is related to US history this is unit 12 of my fifth grade membership. But if you really liked this activity and you are not in fifth grade and you want to have students find out who their government leaders are, you can purchase this unit. And there is a lesson, it's lesson number three, leaders in national government. And there's additional things like civic participation, ways to contact government leaders, leadership qualities, and there's even review, game practice, activities, project assessment, all of that good stuff. So if this is something you're interested in, I'll also link this in the show notes. So if you're looking for a worksheet and you're like, I really need to have this all written down, I already have it written down for you in that unit. Another tip I have is to discuss the importance of each government role and how they work together. While this specific activity does not quite mention the judicial branch, I think it's really a great idea to also maybe like in the extension part of it, you can go into let's take a look at who is on the Supreme Court right now. And I'll actually send you the link to the Supreme Court. I'll send you the exact link of their biographies. It's not quite a student friendly website. They can at least see, you know, the faces and the names. But there's also a short paragraph about each person you and so they can see the current members of the Supreme Court justice. So this could be something that they go on like as an extension, and maybe summarize what they learned about each of the justices that are currently in the Supreme Court. So that is a another tip. And then, of course, last tip, encourage students to ask questions and share what they learned with the class? What were their aha moments? What were their takeaways? So this scavenger hunt and just learning about national leaders in general and who represents their state and who represents their district is a great springboard for students to explore the fascinating world of the US government by uncovering the leaders who make the decisions, students will gain a deeper understanding of how our government works and their place within it.

Hopefully, this episode was insightful and gave you some ideas to spark when teaching about US government or government in general. I hope you have a great rest of your week, and I will talk to you again next week.

Thanks for listening to the social studies teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review. I would love to hear your thoughts. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I can't wait for you to join me in the next episode for more teacher tips and strategies.