Melissa Jacobs
Catholic Social Teaching Exercise
Principle 7: Care for Gods Creation
Age: 4th grade
Activity: Saturday is Earth Day and I believe that this would be a great way to not
only teach the principle of Care for Gods Creation, but also to incorporate Earth
Day. Students will create an Earth Day Public Service Announcement to raise
awareness about the environment and its crucial significance to our communities.
Procedures: Students will be grouped together in 4-5 students. They will write up
a public service announcement to discuss any environmental issue that they would
like to address within their public service announcement. They will be provided with
examples including pollution, recycling, oil spills, etc. Students will:
1.) Brainstorm their topic
2.) Write their public service announcement and ensure that each student will be
on screen at some point during it.
3.) Write up a dialogue for their announcement (ensure that they discuss how
the environmental issue has affected the community.
4.) Create any props they would like to use including a microphone, chairs, a
desk, pictures, etc.
5.) Record their public service announcement with I movie with the assistance of
the teacher or parent helper (that would be requested prior to the lesson
occurring).
6.) Get ready to share with their classmates.
Assessment for this activity will be a rubric. Students will be graded as follows:
(See next page)
1.) Worked together as a team
5 4 3 2 1
2.) Completed brainstorming through graph, concept map, or other visual
5 4 3 2 1
3.) Students effectively discussed their environmental issue
5 4 3 2 1
4.) Students effectively stated how the environment affects the community
5 4 3 2 1
5.) IMOVIE was three minutes long
5 4 3 2 1
6.) All students were seen on the IMOVIE
5 4 3 2 1
SOCIAL JUSTICE: This activity relates to social justice because it Social Justice
discusses crisis and environmental disasters and how they affect families. This
project specifically discusses how environmental disasters and issues are connected
with community.
Principle 3: Rights and Responsibilities
Age Level: 1st grade
Activity: 1st grade students will decorate a paper grocery bag and ask family and
other grades to donate canned good products to donate to families.
Procedure:
1.) Teacher will send out letter asking for students and teachers in the school to
bring in canned goods or other nonperishable items if possible to donate.
2.) Students and teacher will discuss by creating a concept map on the white
board what are items that families need to survive, including those discussed
in the CST principle (food, clothing, house, and education).
3.) Students will create a bag to donate to the food bag for families in need.
4.) Students will collect canned goods from other classrooms and nonperishable
items to donate.
5.) Students will place goods in their decorated bags.
6.) Teacher will attempt to get someone from the food bank to come and meet
the class and collect the items that were donated.
Assessment: This assessment would be fairly simple. This activity is for 1 st grade.
The initial assessment would be informal. Discussing with students on the
whiteboard and creating a concept map. The students would also be photographed
with their bag they created and this would be placed into their yearly portfolio to
display participation in the unit. Students would also be asked at the end of the
lesson why helping others is important? Each would write this down on the
following worksheet and draw a picture of them helping another person.
Social Justice: This ties to social justice as the entire lesson focuses on helping
others in need and what rights of people are. Students will have a better
understanding of poverty and the impact that this can have.
Helping is important because
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