1. Complaints! Complaints! Complaints! • You have a voice! Let it be heard! • Discuss in your groups your complaints about how the kids your age are treated at school. • Who makes the rules that you don’t like. • Who decides if they are fair or not? • How can you get the rules changed? • What does it mean to be independent from those rules? • How does a group of people declare that they will no longer follow the rules?

2. Your Declaration of Independence • You are going to compose a document based on your complaints to be sent to the appointed authority. • Preamble • To whom would you send your complaints? Why? What reason would you give for your decision to write out your complaints?

3. Statement of beliefs, • or the thinking behind the complaints • What makes you think your complaints are worthwhile? • Why should things be changed? • Can you summarize the thinking behind your desire for change in a single sentence?

4. List of complaints • Is there anything in particular the reader should notice about your complaints? • Is there anything you need to keep in mind to make sure your audience understands and appreciates your complaints? • What kinds of event inspired your complaints?

5. Prior attempts to redress grievances • Have you already tried to make any changes in the treatment of young people? • In what way?

6. Declaration of Independence!!! • Is it possible to say in a single sentence what it is you really want to happen? • It would take time to change the system to accommodate all of your complaints. What should happen right away?

7. The signatures • Who would be willing to sign his/her name to this list of complaints, even if it were going to be seen and read by many people?

8. The parts of the Declaration of Independence Preamble: The reasons for writing down the Declaration Statements of beliefs: specifying what the undersigned believed List of complaints: the offenses that impelled the declaration Statement of prior attempts to redress grievances: the ways they tries to address the complaints with the Crown Declaration of Independence: the statement that declares independence Signatures: The signers of the Declaration of Independence