(15-20 minutes)

OBJECTIVE
Students identify leaders that direct or guide us.

MATERIALS
No materials are necessary for this activity.

GET READY

• Say to your students, Before I became a teacher, I studied so I could better help you learn. In a democracy, our leaders study the problems of our country so they can help us solve them.
• Say, In democracies we have leaders who make decisions. They are allowed to make these decisions, however, only because we gave them the permission.
• Say, We are going to play a game about leadership.

INSTRUCTIONS

• Have your students stand in a circle.
• Have one student volunteer to briefly stand outside the room (so they don't know what the class is doing).
• Select another student to be the leader.
• Tell the leader to make motions such as moving hands, tapping feet, nodding head, etc.
• Instruct the other students to do whatever the leader does. Call the volunteer student back in
  the room.
• Ask the volunteer student to stand in the center of the circle, attentively watch his/her classmates, and try to identify the leader. When the student discovers the leader, start the game over with two new students.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• What was the leader's role in this game?
• What do the leaders of our community, our state, and our country do?
• Can you name some leaders in your home, school, or community?
• Were you ever a leader before you played this game?
• Have you ever followed a leader?
• Are there certain ways leaders should act? What makes a good leader?

VOTE QUOTE
"The whole of government consists in the art of being honest." – Thomas Jefferson