COVID-19: When Freedom Was Traded for Fear – 5-Day Lesson Plan
COVID-19: When Freedom Was Traded for Fear
5-Day Lesson Plan
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Day 1
What Were Lockdowns? |
Day 2
Fear and Messaging |
Day 3
Impact on Families |
Day 4
Freedoms and Rights |
Day 5
Lessons for the Future |
| Reading |
- What Was COVID-19 Lockdown and Why Was It New
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- How Governments Used Fear to Change Our Behavior
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- How Lockdowns Hurt Families and Workers
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- The Freedoms We Lost During the Pandemic
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- What the Pandemic Response Means for Our Future
- Discussion Questions: Connecting the Big Ideas
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| Key Ideas |
- A lockdown is when governments tell everyone to stay home, which is different from quarantine where only sick people are separated
- The 2020 lockdowns were the first time in modern history that governments shut down normal life for healthy and sick people alike
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- Government teams of experts decided to use ‘hard-hitting emotional messaging’ to make people more afraid so they would follow the rules
- Slogans like ‘Stay Home, Save Lives’ and ‘Don’t Kill Granny’ were designed to make people feel guilty if they didn’t obey
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- About 40% of workers could work from home on computers, but 60% could not and had to keep going to work or lost their jobs
- Between February and May 2020, unemployed Americans grew from 6.2 million to 20.5 million people
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- A Supreme Court Justice said the COVID-19 response may have been ‘the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history’ of America
- Freedom of assembly was restricted – churches were limited to 10-25 people while casinos could have 500 people
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- A precedent is when a decision becomes an example for the future – the pandemic created precedents that governments might use again
- New surveillance tools like contact tracing apps and vaccine passports were introduced and might become permanent
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| Activities |
- Vocabulary Cards (Set 1)
- Mini Book: What Were Lockdowns?
- Coloring Page
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- Flapbook: Fear and Messaging
- Vocabulary Cards (Set 2)
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- Copywork
- Vocabulary Cards (Set 3)
- Mini Book Pages
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- Flapbook: Freedoms and Rights
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- Tri-Fold Booklet: From Start to Finish
- Booklet: What Do You Think?
- Optional Quiz or Writing Prompts
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