John Locke and Natural Rights

From one teacher to another

Locke's a hard sell when nobody's thought about where government's authority comes from in the first place, so I built this one to start with the question instead of the philosopher's name: why does a government get to tell anyone what to do, and what happens once it stops holding up its end of the deal? That's the version of natural rights and consent of the governed that actually lands with a class that'd otherwise tune out at the word Enlightenment.

This sits in the run-up to the political revolutions unit, so I wrote it to set up everything that comes after it. Once a class has sat with the idea that government exists because people agreed to it, the revolutions that follow stop being a list of dates and start being an argument people were actually having.

The guided notes stay locked to the slides step by step, the activity has a full answer key behind it, and both the quiz and the exit ticket are already set up as self-grading Google Forms, with a teacher guide to walk you through pacing.