Grade 6 · Contemporary World Cultures · §113.18 · Problem-Based Learning

Who Decides? — Building a Government from Scratch

A Problem-Based Learning unit. Students study how societies choose to govern themselves, take on a stakeholder's point of view, and work a real, ill-structured question — building from surface to deep to transfer learning. The teacher is a guide, not the answer key.

Driving question: Imagine a new community of people who have come together to share a land and a future. They must decide how they will govern themselves: Who holds power — one leader, a few, or everyone? What powers should the government have, and what limits? How will decisions be made, and how will rights be protected? As founders, what kind of government should this society build?

The three-phase path (do them in order)

Problem-solving is a transfer move — it only works once students have knowledge to reason with. So the problem in Phase 3 is deliberately gated behind Phases 1 and 2.

① Surface

Build the knowledge

Vocabulary, a jigsaw read on how societies govern, and comparing two real governments. ~1–2 periods.

② Deep

Connect & organize

A spectrum of government types with trade-offs, sources with different points of view, and a structured argument. ~1–2 periods.

③ Transfer

Solve the problem

Meet the problem, take a role, investigate, propose & defend a government structure, debrief. ~2–4 periods.

⛔ Gate: don't open the Phase 3 problem until students have finished the surface and deep activities. Meeting the problem too early turns inquiry into guessing.

Big idea & objectives

Big idea: Societies choose how to organize government along a spectrum from limited to unlimited power. That choice shapes citizens' rights, responsibilities, and daily life — so the founders' decisions matter for everyone who will live under them.

Know: what a government is, the difference between limited and unlimited government, and the main ways societies organize who rules and how.
Understand: the same question — who holds power and how rights are protected — looks different from each stakeholder's point of view, and every choice trades one value for another.
Do: run the problem-solving process end to end — define a problem, gather information, weigh options, choose and defend a solution, and evaluate it (§113.18(c)(22)(B)).

Standards this unit is aligned to (§113.18)

TEKS SE	Where it lives in the unit
(c)(9)	Limited & unlimited governments — Surface jigsaw & vocabulary, Deep spectrum
(c)(10)	Ways people organize government (who rules & how) — Surface jigsaw, Deep spectrum, Transfer
(c)(11)	How citizenship varies among societies — Surface jigsaw, Transfer roles
(c)(12)	Individual rights, responsibilities & freedoms — Surface, Deep sources, Transfer brief
(c)(13) · (c)(14)	Similarities & differences within & among cultures and their shared institutions — Deep & Transfer
(c)(19)	Analyze sources & points of view; support a claim with evidence — Deep & Transfer
(c)(21)	Communicate conclusions in written and visual form — Transfer 8-part brief
(c)(22)(B)	The problem-solving process — the entire Transfer phase

Teacher prep & materials

Print the facilitator guide (teacher moves, map of possibilities, role cards, debrief prompts) and the assessment pack (rubric + individual-in-group).
Chart paper or a projected space for three shared columns: Hunches · Know · Need-to-Know (the KWHL chart).
Vetted sources for investigation (district-approved). Suggested public, reputable sources are listed in the facilitator guide.
No logins, no accounts — every page runs in the browser. Student writing and products live on paper or in tools your district already vets.

▶ Start Phase 1 — Surface 🧑‍🏫 Facilitator guide ✅ Assessment 📊 Correlation

Teacher supports: UDL · ELPS · PBL facilitation guide (7 languages)

Aligned to (not reproduced from) 19 TAC Ch.113 §113.18; effect sizes from Visible Learning MetaX. This region and scenario are a teaching fiction based on real questions about how societies govern themselves.