This lesson contains multiple summative options. One is directly related to the Solution Plan Project; the other is not, though completing it would still help your students progress towards completing the project. If you are treating this lesson as a stand-alone entity (rather than teaching it along with other lessons in the Protecting Nebraska Waters curriculum), or if your students are not completing the Solution Plan Project, you should choose Option 1. In making your decision, you should also keep in mind how much time you want to dedicate to this assessment, as well as which option is the most natural “next step” in your students’ learning, regardless of whether or not they are completing the Solution Plan Project. 

Each student will choose a local community problem that they would like to tell a civic story about, either from an insider’s or an outsider’s perspective. Alternatively, if your students have been studying local water quality problems all year,  you could have them use water quality as their topic; this would reduce the amount of research the students have to do as part of completing this activity. 

The students will not actually tell their stories; instead, they will produce written plans of which stories they would like to tell and how they would like to tell them. If you choose to do the taking informed action activity for this lesson, the students will use the plans they wrote to actually tell their stories. 

Activity instructions

The students will write 300 – 500 words about how what they learned in this lesson could apply to their Solution Plan Project.

Reflection prompts:

• What story do you want to tell through your civic solution project? Be sure to outline the main elements of your story (setting, characters, etc.)
• How do you plan on telling your story? What medium(s) could you use, and why would it be best suited for your project? 
• What audience(s) would you like to target with your project, and how do you plan to do it?