Lessons - Research

Critical reading and thinking is crucial to becoming an informed, active citizen, especially in our modern, information saturated world. Help your students develop high quality research, reading and thinking skills as they navigate sources, learn how to detect bias, and pose and answer questions.

The objective of the Research module is for students to understand the societal context of their issue. The activities serve to scaffold the development of research questions, a research plan, how to find good quality sources, and how to read these sources critically.

The lessons demonstrate the necessity of researching an issue before forming an opinion, and how evidence, used well, can be used to shift the opinions of others.

As with all our resources, choose the activities and lessons which suit your needs (and those of your students) the best.The lessons which we consider to be a “core” component of the Passport to Democracy program have been highlighted in red in the downloadable resource.

Teacher Lesson Plans

All lesson plans include curriculum links, learning activities, links to additional resources and Learning Intention & Success Criteria statements.

Lesson 1: Starting Out

Students will develop both research skills and the ability to critically evaluate sources that they find in their research.

Lesson 2: Research

Students will collaborate to develop research questions and delegate tasks using the template provided.

Lesson 3: What do others think?

Students develop a survey to add to their other research methods.

Lesson 4: Me and my local representative

Students investigate who their local representative is (at the level appropriate to their issue) and the best ways of contacting this person in order to gain support for their cause.

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