Lesson: Create a Government
This lesson was taught to three classes of Freshmen in the Spring of 2013. In this project, students had to imagine that they crash landed on a deserted island and only 300 people survived (We opened the lesson with a clip of a certain ABC television drama that was VERY similar in its plot line). The problem for these students was that they did not have a background in the functions and purposes in government, so the students were given articles to read in a jigsaw fashion before joining their group to create a government and present before the class. This lesson took 2-3 days, and can be found here.
What do Chuck Norris and Big Bird have in Common?Lesson: Political Ads
This lesson was taught to three classes of Seniors in the Spring of 2013. In this lesson, students are shown multiple political ads. As they are watching, they are instructed to analyze what the message of each ad is, and to decide whether the ad is persuasive or not. As the lesson goes along, students are given context outside of particular ads to show them that outside research is critical in politics, and they cannot just take what candidates are saying at face value. This lesson can be found here.
Win the White House
After spending two weeks discussing political issues, political parties, the electoral college, and the role of media in politics. The culmination of this unit came in two parts. The first part was an essay (found here). The second part was an election simulation (video game) called Win the White House on iCivics.org. This game encapsulates the strategy behind winning an election in a simple, straightforward format, and the students were able to learn the nuances of the electoral college in addition to the facts. This lesson can be found here.
Amendment Project
I gave my Seniors a project where they were to research one of the 27 Amendments and to do a project explaining the amendment. The paramaters of the project can be found here. Among the best are videos that can be seen on youtube here and here.
U.S. Constitution Study Materials
Packet: This is not a lesson as much as it is a tool of preparation for the exam. I developed a packet that the students used for a month that contained the text of the U.S. Constitution as well as questions that focused the students on the material that would be on the exam. I did not give the students this information in advance. I required them to look into the text to find their answers. The packet (with most of the answers filled in) can be found here. The packet the students had did not contain the answers.
Quizzes: I gave short multiple choice quizzes (found on this webpage) to my students at the beginning of each class to practice testing for the Constitution exam. In the future, I will either have students do quizzes online by developing Quizstar quizzes, or I will use Gradecam for quick postquiz grading to maximize instructional time.
Flashcards: I developed flashcards that students could study through Quizlet. I did this for both the U.S. Constitution Exam and the Illinois State Constitution Exam.