No Animals Allowed
This lesson is the most frequently-requested lesson for elementary school classrooms!
Grade Level: Grades K–8
Time: One class period, 30–60 minutes (the presentation may be adapted based on length of visit)
Languages: English, Spanish, and Mandarin (links available below)
Note: In person, this lesson can be a lot of fun! But for remote visits, this lesson should be reserved for students grade 3 and higher.
Speaker notes are provided in the presentations, making this a "Grab and Go" lesson. They aren't mandatory or required. Many find it reduces prep time. You may use/edit the printable PDF of slides as a guide during your visit.
Objectives:
Students will learn about the three branches of government.
Students will practice critical thinking as they learn the difference between a law and a rule through several case scenarios.
Students will learn about the intent of a law.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR DELIVERY:
Lesson Plan (instructions on how to present)
No Animals Allowed Presentation with Notes (45 min) | Version for Teachers (no notes)
Note: You may edit the slides but the overall objective should not be changed.
PRESENTATIONS
Planning with the Teacher:
For virtual and in-person visits, you should meet ahead of time with the teacher to discuss class needs and their level of understanding the three branches of government.
For virtual visits, the pre-meeting should be on the platform to be used for the visit. This will give you a chance to make sure you can connect, hear one another, and test your camera and mic.
You may find this printable PDF of slides with speaker notes handy for making additional notes as you go through the lesson with the teacher.
Calling on Students: you and the teacher should decide who will call on students to read the case scenarios (there are seven). Note: if your visit is hybrid (appearing virtually on ZOOM or WebX to a classroom of students), you might not be able to hear students. You may read the scenarios yourself.
Make sure there's enough time for Q&A
Ask the teacher for a phone number should you have problems connecting.
After the visit, be sure to collect Feedback forms!
FEEDBACK FROM JUDGES: AUG 2021–DEC 2021
“I think the lesson plan is well done because the students come up with many different viewpoints on what is and what is not a violation. Even at this age, with these concrete examples, they understood how vagueness in a law can lead to different or unintended outcomes. I used 5 slides of my own two dogs after the "No Animals Allowed" lesson, and I made up the possible rule violation based upon each specific photo (dogs on the beach, no seatbelts, eating donuts, not exercising the 6' social distance, etc). We had a lot of fun with this part too.”