Idaho Social Studies 4.SS.4.5
The Standard
Identify elected officials, how they can be contacted, and how they are responsible to their constituents.
Idaho Content Standards: K-12 Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students name elected officials who represent their community or state. They find public ways to contact those officials and explain how officials answer to the people who elect them.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can name an elected official who could help with a local concern and find that office’s public phone number or email. They can explain who elects the official and how those voters can hold the official accountable.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think a school principal is an elected official because the principal is in charge. They may also think every elected official represents everyone in the country, or that an official must agree with every person who contacts them.
How to Assess It
- Give students a printed city officials directory. Ask: “The city needs a safer crosswalk. Name an elected official to contact, copy a public contact method, and tell how city voters can hold that official accountable.”
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs printed official profiles and a public contact directory; have them match each elected official to an office phone number.
Ask students to write a three-sentence note to a city council member about a crosswalk near school.
Play a card sort: group mayor, governor, principal, and city council member by elected or not elected, then match officials to their voters.
Open your local government website and have students find an elected official’s public contact page for a neighborhood concern.
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Printable 4.SS.4.5 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- 3.SS.4.7
Identify ways children and adults can participate in their community and/or local governments.
- 3.SS.4.6
Identify local government officials.
- 9-12.GOV.21
Identify and be able to engage with key officials, both elected and appointed, in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches at the federal, state, and l...
- 4.SS.4.6
Identify ways to be informed about and participate in state, Tribal, and local governments.
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