Create Your Own Country

Give students guidance and structure to imagine how they would set about creating their own country, based on shared values and aspirations. Use U.S. founding documents and history as mentor texts and guides, as well as to illustrate the pitfalls, injustices, and complexities of government.

This project can be integrated with government, economics, history, and geography content, as well as with character education curricula, and reading, writing, research, and presentation standards.

Timing This project can be adapted to be a short 1-2 week community building project, a summative assessment at the end of a government unit, or an ongoing tool for applying and building breadth and depth of understanding in Social Studies content over the course of a grading period.

Guiding Questions: Use these questions to help focus reading, writing, and talking on big and complex ideas about governments.

• Why would people want to start a new country?
• How can people use common values and beliefs to plan a country or community?
• What things are needed in a country?
• What kinds of government are there?
• How can government best serve the people?
• What are the dangers of government? How can they be avoided?

Mentor Texts & Essential Resources

• I strongly encourage you to use a character education curriculum or a study of character traits as an introduction and reference from the very beginning of this unit. My district has used a variation of the Pillars of Ethical Behavior.
• Weslandia by Paul Fleischman is a great narrative to illustrate the way values and interests can drive a person’s vision of community and culture. Read this aloud as a unit launch.

 

 

• How to Build Your Own Country by Valerie Wyatt serves as an essential guide whenI do this project. It guides with short, entertaining and informative text and examples. The ideas and structure of this book inspired and guided this unit in large part.

 

 

• The Preamble to the Constitution or We the Kids: The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
• The Bill of Rights
• flags, maps, National Anthems, and an assortment of other kinds of primary documents and symbols of the U.S. and other countries
• True (sort of…) by Katherine Hannigan is one of my favorite read alouds: it is funny and tragic; it is about getting into trouble–and learning how to get out of it; it is about friendship and language and love. One aspect of the story is that the three main characters invent their own country. If you are looking for a good read aloud, this one will dovetail with the unit well.

Deep Reading & Analysis Mini-Lessons

• Pillars of Ethical Behavior I spend a couple of weeks at the beginning of each school year studying the six Pillars of Ethical Behavior: Respect for Self & Others; Responsibility; Trustworthiness; Fairness & Justice; Caring & Compassion; Citizenship. We read picture books that illustrate each and engage in a variety of discussion, writing, and acting exercises that explore what each look like, feel like, and sound like when we practice them in our classroom, around the school, and in our neighborhoods and communities. This is an important introduction to the school year, to building community, and to begin to develop the connection between everyday thoughts, words, and deeds, and the values they illustrate. If you don’t have a character education curriculum (formal or informal), you can accomplish similar goals by doing a character traits unit in which you connect the thoughts, words, and actions of characters to character traits and then correlate character traits to values and ethics. These discussions will encourage your students to approach the tasks with a level of seriousness and depth, and will model how to connect the abstract to the specific.
• Unit Launch: Read Weslandia aloud. Discuss the book as a class. Ask students to make some inferences about Wesley’s values, beliefs, and interests. Then look at how those values, beliefs, and interests show up in the society that he creates.
• Personal & Collaborative Values Summarize the character education or character traits lessons you have been doing and encourage students to connect these ideas to their own lives. Ask them to consider what their most important values, priorities, interests, and beliefs are. This is one time when I wouldn’t model for them what mine are or encourage them to collaborate–I want them to begin to think through what they think and believe. Have them use an index card to briefly gather their top five most important values, priorities, and beliefs. Encourage them to think deeply about this, but also ensure that you leave them freedom to really tap into their own beliefs and values. Many of my students were positive but basic: be kind, love animals, make art, be good sports. The next day I passed their index cards back to them and gave them the assignment to create groups of 3-5 people with whom they had at least 1-2 common values, priorities, interests, and beliefs written on their cards. This grouping mechanism allowed them to have choice also required them to have a basis for their choice and common ground to work with in their group.
• Stake Out an Identity: (How to Build Your Own Country, pgs. 7-9, 11-14). Read these pages aloud (skipping page 10–come back to it later). Discuss the name, passport style, motto, and National Anthem of the U.S. Assignment: assign country groups to create their own name, motto, flag, anthem, and passport. Keep examples of U.S. anthem, motto, flag, and passport posted or available for students to use as a reference. This work may be ongoing over a few days. Consider asking the Music teacher your class works with if they can support students in creating their anthems.
• Kinds of Governments & Writing a Constitution: (How to Build Your Own Country, pgs. 15-17, 20-21). Read these pages aloud (skipping 18-19 for now). Discuss the kinds of governments and the flaws of each. (If you use the Quotation for Morning Thinking routine, Winston Churchill’s famous quote might be a good one to use the day you do this lesson:  “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried”). Do a close reading (whole class or in breakout small groups) of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Jigsaw the meaning by breaking apart words and phrases, and then rebuilding. Work together to infer the values and beliefs of the authors of our Constitution using the text of the Preamble in the same way you did with Weslandia. Assignment: country groups should write a Preamble to their Constitution, using the U.S. Preamble as a mentor text; their Preamble should make their values and purpose clear.
• Bill of Rights: Use one of the books about the Bill of Rights or the National Archives website to study the Bill of Rights together. Discuss them in context: what kinds of things had the British monarchy done to its subjects and to the colonists? What is the difference between limited and unlimited government? The Bill of Rights protects U.S. citizens from government overreach and values individual liberty. Focus particularly on the First Amendment and the protection of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition to redress grievances. Encourage students to think about their own experiences and values. Assignment: country groups should write their own Bill of Rights using the U.S. Bill of Rights as a mentor text. Note: in my experience, students had a hard time distinguishing these rights from laws…or at least they found themselves wanting to veer into lawmaking. If you find this happening, do a little “catch & release” minilesson by brainstorming differences between individual rights and laws, creating a t-chart for student reference, and then guiding students to revisit the definitions as they work.
• Branches of Government: Brainstorm a list of the things that government does and is responsible for. Provide some resources, like this infographic, about the three branches of government, their responsibilities, and the system of checks and balances outlined in the Constitution. Review your list of government responsibilities and try to place each under the appropriate branch. Assignment: country groups should create their own visualization and description of their branches of government with separation of powers and checks and balances. Note: this may end up just being a recreation of the U.S. federal government model–that’s great! It’ll give them a chance to discuss it, write it, and figure out how to represent it in a way that makes sense to them. If a country group changes the model, that’s also great! Just have them articulate the ways theirs is different and why they chose to make those changes.

Options & Extensions

• Voting! Now that your country groups have a government structure, let’s vote! Read the section about elections (How to Build Your Own Country, pgs. 18-19). It might be a good time to check out some of the great picture books about the history of voting rights in this country as well. You can discuss the ongoing debate about voting rights; for example, should convicted criminals have the right to vote? Or should children be allowed to vote? Your country groups may decide to hold elections for themselves; they may want to campaign if multiple people want the same position.
• Fairness & Justice: Read the section about making laws (How to Build Your Own Country, pgs. 22-23). Revisit the infographic about crazy laws–see if your students can infer what might have led to the creation of some of those laws. Then discuss whether they’re a good idea or not. Read a couple of picture books about U.S. laws that were changed or found to be unconstitutional (The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage, Sit In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down,  or Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation are good ones for this!). Have students discuss the ways that laws that enforced segregation are in conflict with the U.S. Constitution. Assignment: country groups should write 3-5 laws for their country. These laws must be consistent with the values outlined in their Preamble and must not violate any freedoms guaranteed to their citizens in their Bill of Rights. Note: I suggest giving the guidance that the laws don’t include the punishments, simply because it helps keep the groups focused on the role of laws and assuring that the laws are constitutional.
• Immigration: Read page 10 to launch a connection to immigration.
• Economics: Read pages 26-27 and review the relevant parts of Weslandia if you want to connect economics standards to making their own country.
• Geography: To integrate geography, require your country groups to create a map of their invented country.

Final Product Publishing Mini-Lessons When I did this unit, I integrated our immigration standards into the project and the students’ final project was to make a commercial advertising their country to persuade people to immigrate to their country. Here are some of the mini-lessons I included as we moved to the final product publishing phase of the project:

• Revising & Presenting Work: I shared a simple checklist of the things they had been working on that were required to be included in their ad (name of country, flag, motto, Preamble to the Constitution, Bill of Rights, National Anthem, branches of government, and a short appeal to persuade people to immigrate to their country). As they plan to share the collaborative writing they’ve done for this project, they may want to revise with a new audience and final product in mind.
• Making a Video: This sounds scary, but honestly, it really wasn’t. Basically my mini-lesson was, make a video. Work together. We didn’t use any fancy equipment–just their laptops and iPads. Some kids produced their videos within PhotoBooth (so simple, just shoot & click); others used iMovie. They did what they were comfortable with and figured it out. They helped each other, did their own troubleshooting, and shared expertise. Easy peasy for me; essential life skills for them.
• Power of Persuasion: This mini-lesson is easily integrated with digital citizenship and consumer education. Show some commercials that help kids identify advertising trends, such as these:

Watch together and discuss the ways that the commercials make an appeal. Point out things like tone, emotions, humor, and reasoning. Give students some opportunities to discuss and reflect about how certain ads make them feel or change their thinking. You may want to spend some time talking about the values or beliefs that these commercials illustrate, as well as techniques advertisers use to persuade. I like to talk about persuasion versus manipulation and encourage them to try to use fair and straightforward persuasive techniques.

• Sharing Shared Work: Students should have shared the responsibility of creating the work, so we talk about sharing the publishing of the work as well. I expect every child who helped create the country and its documents to appear in the commercial for that country in some way. We make the parallel to a democracy: everyone’s contributions may be different, but everyone needs to contribute. It’s a good way to revisit the principles of the project and illustrate how big picture beliefs can be put into practice in everyday ways.
• Public Speaking Voice: We have Speaking & Listening standards, as well as standards for the Presentation of Knowledge & Ideas; more importantly, being able to speak clearly, in the appropriate register, and with confidence is simply an essential life skill. Invest the time to reflect on the fact that public speaking is difficult and can make people feel anxious, but that it’s also really important. Give students the opportunity to practice in small, safe groups, and to reflect on how they want to improve. Remind students of the importance of practice.
• Share, Celebrate, & Reflect! Watch each other’s commercials. Have students do an informal written reflection about what makes them want to move to each country–or why some countries might not be the best place for them.