aboutlearning

This course deals with the creation of the Constitution, the actual document and its details.The Rule of Law System that is the bedrock of our nation.

• The major concept is “We the People”. 
• The outcome is that the students understand the balance of power if sovereignty is in the hands of all the people.
• The Essential Question deals with the tension obetween freedom and order in an imperfect world. 
• Students will experience and examine The Constitution, the heart of which is the sovereignty of the people and their freedom to make choices and to speak in their own voices.
• The students will perform a mock Constitutional Convention taking on the personas of major attendees of the Convention and using the US Senate protocal for speaking.. 
• They will examine Supreme Court cases that involve issues of student rights and answer the Essential Question,
• Have Americans created a system that equally serves individual and societal rights?
• This course will take two weeks and is a perfect beginning for a course in American history. 

"America is the best idea anyone ever had for a country.”

-- Craig Ferguson

What's Included?

• All the rubrics for the various tasks in the course
• Power point presentations for classroom use
• Student study cards for the Constitution test chosen from a composite of state and national tests
• A copy of United States Constitution in a small take-along book

Student tasks

• Cluster the core issues of the seven Articles
• Create a graphic organizer for the functions of the three branches of the government:
• Understand the three branches of the government: master their duties and mind map their relationships.
• Mind map the nature, relationships, and duties of the House and the Senate.
• Draw a flow chart for how a bill originates and moves from the House to the Senate to the President and then back (if vetoed).
• Master the Amendments by creating their own shorthand version.
• Add their own wished-for possible Amendment.
• Explore case studies on Freedom of Speech, Religion and Assembly involving high school students as argued by the Supreme Court
• Can a student say a prayer before a football game over the loud speaker?
• Can a high school faculty remove a student editorial from the student paper?
• Can students silently protest a war our country is engaged in?
• Write their own dissents on majority Supreme Court decisions when they disagree.
• Take a Mini quiz on what are constitutional violations or which are not. (Asked two straight A students from a fine high school who had passed the Constitution test with flying colors to take the quiz and they failed it.)
• Script and perform a Mock Constitutional convention where the students assume the personas of chief members of the original convention and argue the five issues that stalled and almost ended the convention using prescribed U S Senate protocols.
  
  (The students gave the mock convention the highest marks of any activity in the course according to field test research.) The issues they argue...
  
  • Number of votes in Congress per state
  • Checks and balances of the 3 branch system
  • How the President should be elected
  • States rights vs federal rights
  • Slavery

• Write an essay on the debate whether or not we can interpret the Constitution as it changes  over time, or abide by it exactly as it was written two hundred years ago.
• Memorize the Preamble
• Research their community and taking actions to express their citizenship in some real way, a commitment to human dignity.