Mrs. Callahan’s 5th grade Social Studies classes have spent the last few weeks learning about different forms of government. Students learned about the different forms of government that exist, including democracy, autocracy, oligarchy, theocracies and others. They compared and contrasted these forms, and they looked at real-life examples in the world today.
During our unit of study students took part in an interactive activity. Students got to compete with each other in groups to see who can build the best straw tower with straws and tape, but there’s was a slight catch: each group must build the straw tower based on how their assigned government would build it.
For example, if the government they were assigned was a dictatorship only one person in the group could instruct the others how to build the tower. The other students in the group were not allowed to have any input. The students really enjoyed this fun and interactive activity. Each group evaluated the other students towers on a scale of 1-10. After the activity was completed students wrote a reflection on how the activity worked with their particular group.The students had many varied and strong opinions on how the different forms of government worked with each group.
