Aw, yeah. It's 'Murica time. Let's make some stars and stripes around he-yaah.. So. we've done the whole historical background thing. Which brings us to a walking tour of that beautifully short and (mostly, at least for now) unchanged document. I am torn in opening with a short video. I love crash course, but depending on my mood and desire for crass-ness and a bit of adult (yet not profane) humor... this is a good place to start a summary. It's not on the level of the daily show, but I may not show it to eighth or ninth graders. Preview and know your students. I start the disussion of with a little bit of the Federalist/Anti-federalist debate. I have a worksheet that compares key quotes, and asks the kids to do two things.
And away we go. I hand out a document that my students keep and work out of throughout the entire year. (My annotated lecture notes version is still in the process of being cleaned up... check back later.) In our walking tour, we start with a dabble in all things preamble-ish. It's a thesis that spells out precisely what this 230 year old experiment in representative government is supposed to do... I write the preamble out, and then sort out all of major governmental concepts across the bottom... concepts I grabbed from the previous classes assignment... and then across the top I annotate some brief examples. There is more information out there that covers this information. I have had students work together in a crowd sourcing type manner off of this website, where the kids really focus on the major themes found under the preamble. They had to hunt for evidence of these themes in the primary source documents and summarize them on a digital wall I create on padlet. If I had time, (which this year I didn't), I would review these various documents to illustrate how prevalent these concepts were on the minds of the founding fathers (elite and highly educated as they were.) But, we were taken in different directions this year. So, instead... that walking tour... was meant to highlight not only what each of the various articles generally cover... and then we spent more time setting the table for the various powers...
All the while, we are highlighting, taking notes... talking. Good times.
If you want other ideas of where to go with this unit, consider the following:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Jen's bookshelf: nerdcation
I want to start by thanking Mr. Snowden and Mr. Greenwald for their uncompromising dedication to giving the NSA violations air time and transparency.
I wanted to share some of the most important things I have learned from this book bef...
tagged:
nerdcation
tagged:
nerdcation and to-read
tagged:
nerdcation and to-read
tagged:
nerdcation and to-read
AuthorI lovgov. LOVE IT! I love teaching government, learning about it, debating, discussing, asking questions about government. And not the standard boiler plate questions, but the hard ones that are NOT in the books. Archives
August 2018
Categories
All
|