In this series of lessons, first students will read and reflect on …
In this series of lessons, first students will read and reflect on the Constitution regarding issues of security and liberty. Next, they will participate in a Reflective Conversation in which students will discuss the issues of security and liberty. Finally, they will expand the conversation to a larger community of peers outside of their school.
Website Description: Magna Carta, Montesquieu, the Mayflower, and more! Follow this WebQuest …
Website Description: Magna Carta, Montesquieu, the Mayflower, and more! Follow this WebQuest through history to the events, people, and documents that inspired the writers of the Constitution. This WebQuest serves as an introduction or review. Students will learn how documents from the Middle Ages and thinkers from the Enlightenment had an impact on the system of government that was formed in the Constitution, and how that has an impact on them today.
Student Learning Objectives: Students will be able to... *Identify documents and ideas that shaped the U.S. Constitution *Compare American and British governing documents *Explain key constitutional principles and their impacts
This lesson explores the important Constitutional mechanism providing for the separation of …
This lesson explores the important Constitutional mechanism providing for the separation of powers of government among three branches so that each branch checks the other two. Lesson plans use the New Deal to help teach this concept.
This lesson plan examines Constitutional issues surrounding the resignation of President Nixon …
This lesson plan examines Constitutional issues surrounding the resignation of President Nixon and looks at the specific question: Should the Watergate Special Prosecutor seek an indictment of the former President?
Website Description: When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they didn’t pull their …
Website Description: When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they didn’t pull their ideas out of thin air. They created a government based on a set of fundamental principles carefully designed to guarantee liberty. This lesson lets students look at the Constitution from the perspective of its foundational principles. Students make direct connections between these principles, the Founders’ intentions, and the Constitution itself, and they learn why the constitutional principles are critical to a free society.
Student Learning Objectives: Students will be able to: *Analyze the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution *Identify relationships among popular sovereignty, consent of the governed, limited government, rule of law, federalism, separation of powers, and checks and balances *Describe how these principles are incorporated into the Constitution *Explain the concerns that led the Founders to value these principles
We're revisiting the origins of United States government and rights. Long before …
We're revisiting the origins of United States government and rights.
Long before we could decide and insist upon what they mean to us, a handful of powerful men had to put pen to paper. We're revisiting two episodes from our Foundational Documents series: The Constitution and The Bill of Rights. This is the story of how these now-indispensable documents came to be during a time when independence and unity was new and highly vulnerable.
Our understanding and interpretation of these documents has grown and changed in the hundreds of years since they were ratified. Take some time to get reacquainted.
History is the chronicle of choices made by actors/agents/protagonists in specific contexts. …
History is the chronicle of choices made by actors/agents/protagonists in specific contexts. This lesson places students at the First Federal Congress and asks them to consider whether citizens have the right to instruct their elected representatives on how to vote. This gets to the very heart of what our government is all about. Should we have a republic—a representative government in which elected leaders are free to deliberate and decide on their own—or a democracy, in which representatives follow the lead of their constituents? Students will engage with this question twice: first, as members of the First Federal Congress, not knowing anything about later events, and second, as modern citizens, taking into account partisan gridlock, media (print, broadcast, social media, and Internet news), and the infusion of money into the political arena.
This DBQuest activity has students explore and analyze George Washington's cover letter …
This DBQuest activity has students explore and analyze George Washington's cover letter to the Constitution, which served as an introduction and kick off for the nations's Constitution. Washington's cover letter gives background to the process of creating our Constitution but is also persuasive to its intended audience.
Instructor Notes: Teachers can assign this content to their students in iCivics account and then Clicking the Assign button on this activity. Teachers will then have the option to add a Class into iCivics OR Sync a roster from Google Classroom. This will allow teachers to see student's responses. There are also Downloadable Resources available to support this learning activity.
Critical review of works, theories, and polemics in architecture in the aftermath …
Critical review of works, theories, and polemics in architecture in the aftermath of WWII. Aim is a historical understanding of the period and the development of a meaningful framework to assess contemporary issues in architecture. Special attention paid to historiographic questions of how architects construe the terms of their "present." Required of M.Arch. students.
This lesson uses the example of the 2008 contested Senate election between …
This lesson uses the example of the 2008 contested Senate election between Al Franken and Norm Coleman in Minnesota to discuss contested elections, counting votes, and recount laws. Looks at recount laws in your own state.
During World War II, the defense industry expanded and American men mobilized …
During World War II, the defense industry expanded and American men mobilized for military service. Many women found jobs previously unavailable to them in aircraft plants, shipyards, manufacturing companies, and the chemical, rubber, and metals factories producing war materials. These jobs paid higher salaries than those traditionally categorized as "women's work," such as teaching, domestic service, clerical work, nursing, and library science. Married women were discouraged from working outside the home during the Depression to lower competition with men for limited jobs. After the U.S. entered the war, though, the Federal government encouraged housewives to join the work force as a patriotic duty. The number of employed women grew from 14 million in 1940 to 19 million in 1945, rising from 26 to 36 percent of the work force. Most industry analysts and government planners expected this situation to be temporary. At the end of the war, the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor asked women workers about their future work plans. The bulletin excerpted below revealed that most women wanted to keep their present jobs. Immediately after the war, the percentage of women who worked fell as factories converted to peacetime production and refused to rehire women. In the next few years, the service sector expanded and the number of women in the workforce--especially older married women--increased significantly, despite the dominant ideology of woman as homemaker and mother. The types of jobs available to these women, however, were once again limited to those traditionally deemed "women's work."
After the fall of Atlanta in 1864, the Union Army under General …
After the fall of Atlanta in 1864, the Union Army under General William T. Sherman marched through Georgia to the sea, bringing destruction in its wake. Nearly 18,000 slaves left plantations and attached themselves to the army during its march. This 1865 illustration showed a stereotyped view of the men, women, and children who followed Sherman's army. But to northern readers, the engraving's significance may have lay in its unmistakable message about slaves' utter hatred of slavery. The oft expressed fallacy that they preferred slavery to freedom
Why are the founding principles essential for a free society? This civics …
Why are the founding principles essential for a free society? This civics and government lesson plan was developed to facilitate instruction and discussion concerning the United States’ founding principles versus totalitarian systems of government. Students will contrast a totalitarian system of government with the founding principles of the United States as established in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
With dreams of having a better life, thousands of Chinese risked their …
With dreams of having a better life, thousands of Chinese risked their lives across the Pacific Ocean to join in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad from 1863 to 1869. These Chinese laborers worked under extreme and hazardous environments. Due to their ethnic appearance and language barriers, the Chinese were greatly taken advantage of by their employers. These Chinese laborers became pioneers in the collective labor actions of American labor history, while also contributing to the economies of the U.S. and China.
What is race? What is ethnicity? How can communication and relationships between …
What is race? What is ethnicity? How can communication and relationships between men and women be improved? What causes segregation in our society? How do stereotypes develop and why do they persist? How do an individual's racial, ethnic, and sexual identities form and develop? This course explores these topics and more.
The word "tramp" came into common usage in the 1870s as a …
The word "tramp" came into common usage in the 1870s as a disparaging description of homeless men thrown out of work by the economic depression and forced to take to the road in search of a job or food. Fears of the "tramp menace" were revived during the even more devastating depression that began in 1893. Many Americans viewed tramps with a combination of fear and disgust. In this 1893 letter to Kansas governor Lorenzo Dow Lewelling, out-of-work cook R. L. Robinson expressed dismay for the harsh treatment he and a traveling companion received while looking for work in Kewanee, Kansas. Lewelling was far more sympathetic to jobless travelers than other government officials, in part, from personal experience. He himself had wandered the roads in search of work in the 1870s depression.
During the Great Depression, New Deal programs provided work for a range …
During the Great Depression, New Deal programs provided work for a range of unemployed Americans, including creative artists. Visual artists working for the Federal Art Project created murals for the walls of federal and state buildings and established community art centers in remote areas. The murals often depicted ordinary Americans, at work or in struggle, rendered in heroic, larger than life style. Few of the post office murals commissioned by the Treasury Department Section of Fine Art displayed the humor of Orr C. Fisher's paean to corn. But the Iowa-born Fisher's work suggests the kind of regional boosterism and pride of place that characterized many murals painted by local artists.
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