Everything below runs live on actacivic.com in privacy-safe classroom mode: no student logins, no accounts, nothing collected. Students pick an issue they genuinely care about, find their real representatives, and draft a real letter, in 50 to 70 minutes.
On the For Educators page, type a class name and copy the link it generates. It looks like actacivic.com/?class=Period-3-Civics. Anyone who opens that link is in classroom mode automatically.
Post it in your LMS, project it on the board, or turn it into a QR code with the tool your school already uses. The student one-pager at the end of this guide has a space to write the link and attach a QR code.
Open your own class link, choose Take Action, describe an issue, enter your ZIP code, and read the letter it drafts. It takes 2 to 5 minutes and lets you preview exactly what students will see, including the green classroom-mode bar at the bottom of the screen.
Set the expectation before anyone opens a device: today every student contacts the government about something they personally want changed, and any position is welcome. You are grading the quality of the civic process, not the position taken.
Students open the class link (no login, and the green bar confirms nothing is collected), choose Take Action, and describe their issue in their own words. Specific beats general: "the crosswalk by our school needs a light" works better than "traffic safety". Students who are stuck can pick from the starter topics on screen and make one their own.
Students enter their ZIP code and run the analysis. Acta returns a neutral, clear policy brief on their issue and matches the real officials, federal, state, or local, who actually have jurisdiction over it. Ask students to note which level of government their issue landed at and whether that surprised them.
Acta drafts a personalized letter for each matched official, arguing the student's stated position. The draft is the starting point, not the finish: have students edit it to add their own story, one concrete local detail, and a specific ask. That editing step is where the writing standards live.
Close with a round: who would you send this to, and why that official rather than another? What did the brief tell you that you did not know? Before the period ends, students copy their finished letter into a doc or onto paper, since classroom mode clears everything when the tab closes. Sending is the take-home step on the student one-pager.
In a 50-minute period, keep the opening frame to 5 minutes and the share-out to a quick pair-share plus 3 or 4 volunteers. With 70 minutes, give the full share-out round and let students draft letters to a second official. The flow itself, issue to drafted letter, takes most students 15 to 25 minutes.
The unit works when a conservative student and a progressive student can sit side by side, argue opposite positions, and get the same quality of tools. Say that out loud when you frame the work. If your examples all lean one direction, students will read the assignment as having a right answer.
Offer paired examples when you model the exercise: one student might ask their representative to fund a program, another might ask them to cut it. Both are doing the assignment correctly.
Students may pick charged issues: immigration, guns, abortion, climate. You do not need to steer them away, and doing so quietly teaches that civic action is only for safe topics. Instead, hold every student to the same process standard: a real representative, a factual basis from the brief, a respectful letter, a specific ask.
If your school or district has policies on charged topics in class assignments, apply them as you would to any persuasive writing unit. The mechanics of this lesson, find your representative and make your case, are identical for a student writing about a stop sign and a student writing about a statewide ballot measure.
Acta is neutral by design: it takes the position the student states and argues that position, and it never proposes a stance of its own. The policy brief presents the issue neutrally; the letter argues the student's side because the student chose it. That division of labor is the point of the lesson.
This maps directly to the C3 Framework's taking-informed-action dimension: students communicate conclusions they reached themselves and take action on them in a real civic venue. The tool amplifies the student's voice; it does not supply the opinion. That is also what makes the unit safe to run in any classroom, in any district, on either side of any aisle.
This sheet prints on its own page. Type your class link into the box below before printing, or write it in by hand, and attach a QR code if you use them. One copy per student, or one on the board.
In this period you will pick an issue you actually care about, find the real people who represent you, and draft a letter that makes your case. No login. No account. Acta collects nothing from you, look for the green bar at the bottom of your screen.
A letter that never gets sent is just an essay. Tonight, show your letter to a parent or guardian, tell them who it goes to and why, and send it together from a personal email account, yours or theirs.
Or redo the whole flow together at actacivic.com, it takes about five minutes, and send the letter straight from there. Real constituents writing real letters is how representatives learn what their district wants.