US Supreme Court Comes Alive

Studying the Supreme Court can be challenging for students. They may read about the landmark cases and Chief Justices and say so what? C-SPAN has an excellent resource to bring the Supreme Court alive in your classroom...an Interactive Timeline. The timeline has profiles on the Chief Justices, changes in the Court, and profiles on major cases that have come before the US Supreme Court. Another benefit to utilizing the Interactive Timeline in the classroom is to practice Common Core skills of identifying evidence in responses and practicing sample tasks of utilizing video in performance tasks.

The Interactive Timeline provides many options for teachers and students. In many cases, the timeline has also included video and a few questions for the timeline entries. The video may consist of interviews with scholars, experts, or more recently- audio of arguments before the Court. The questions lend themselves to many uses. Highlighted video and questions may be used as a warm-up to set the stage for day's lesson.  Another possible use would be to have students view the video and questions as an anticipatory set to a unit review where students connect the case to events in a unit or theme in American history or government. Additionally, the timeline has a variety of formats that it may be viewed in. One may view it in the traditional timeline configuration, as well as in a flip book, list or map.

Beyond the timeline uses in the classroom, it may also serve as an idea for student extensions. Perhaps, you may show the timeline as an example and jigsaw your class to create timelines on landmark cases related to themes such as civil rights, federalism, or SPEC (social, political, economic, cultural). A detailed posting on how to create an interactive timeline on Capzles coming next week. Another possible extension would be for students to use the timeline to create their top 10 list with biographical info. Yet another would be to connect your desired case or number of cases to relevance in the United States today based on current events. The possibilities are endless. 

Newspaper Clipping Generator

One of the areas of focus in the Common Core History ELA standards addresses expository writing. Additionally, this is a great formative and summative assessment to use with students. As we are requiring more writing, why not make it fun and creative. Fodey has created a Newspaper Clipping Generator online. Students can work independently or collaboratively to create an informative article and "publish" their work. In doing such an activity, teachers will be hitting multiple Common Core Tasks (Writing 2, 4, 7 Language 1, 2). Students have the opportunity to name their newspaper, date it, create a headline, and create their article. Once complete, the website generates an article clipping like the one to the side. This would be great to do periodically, as a class activity with unit material jigsawed, or as a CST review and post them around the class or hallway for a gallery walk.

Women's History Month Resources

March is Women's History Month. The Library Of Congress has a wealth of resources for teacher to create their own lessons or utilize a lesson and materials ready to go. Better yet, the lessons include primary sources which are great to use in the classroom and support the Common Core State Standards. Women's History  has a variety of material on Women's History. Women Pioneers in American History has a variety of information and primary sources related to the Westward Movement, Suffrage, Struggle for Equality, On the Job, and Women Today. This site also allows you to search for material and lessons by Common Core, State Standards, and Organizations. Women's Words of Wisdom is another great project. The page has a variety of pictures of women. Just click on one to bring up information and a quote from the woman This is a great short and quick way to examine a primary source. One could examine different ladies throughout the month in discussion or use the quote for a warm-up activity.

Periodic Tables Are Not Just For Science Anymore

You may remember having to learn the periodic table in Chemistry class in high school. There were so many elements to remember...kind of like all the New Deal programs. It made sense in Chemistry class, why not do the same for the New Deal. This is exactly what the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum has done.

We now have the Interactive PeriodicTable of the New Deal. You can use it on their site or email them for a cd disk or color poster. As the site states, The table presents major programs, players and events surrounding the New Deal and includes brief definitions or descriptions. The table is designed to be used in a number of ways: as a visual depiction of the complexity and scope of these events; as a way introduce students to specific players and events; or as comprehensive list from which teachers and students can select a topic for further in-depth investigation.

Wallwisher evolves to a more teacher friendly tool…Padlet

Wallwisher was a site where students and teachers could brain storm and move the text box of ideas around into categories or chronological order. Many teachers also wanted to do more.  Apparently Wallwisher has listened to comments and their vision for a “tablet” like site has evolved. Wallwisher is now Padlet.

There are a variety of ways to use this in your classroom beyond an in class brainstorming activity. They have included a streams, which places the postings/notes in chronological order with a timestamp. This allows teachers to easily use this as an extension activity beyond the classroom. Padlet can easily be used as a notice board, brainstorm, make lists of activity/unit/class resources, watch and share videos, and more. I really like the idea of it becoming a different discussion board.

One way that I have used in the classroom is to brainstorm ideas on a topic. I had a student type in the responses students shared and I have also had students post their responses from their smart phones or in the computer lab. As a class, we then discuss ways of categorizing them, you could also categorize them based on SPEC (social, political, economic, cultural) categories. This can be done as an end of unit review, DBQ outside info review, or CST review prep.

Constitution Day Lesson & Resources

I just presented a lesson for Constitution Day yesterday and thought I'd share here too. The lesson meets the Constitution Day federal requirement and integrates Common Core State Standards as well. Feel free to download and modify to your needs or send your students here.

Constitution Day Lesson Resources 2012 Presentation Site

Here's what you will find:
Two Prezis (PPT updated for the 21st century) that I used to show teachers and one for use in the classroom. The Prezi is open, so that you may copy and modify it to meet your needs.

Prezi Basics handouts. There are two options: a double sided pamphlet and a five page document that I encountered online. You may wish to print the pamphlet out for the students and link the 5 pager online for students to refer to.

Prezi storyboard word document. This has a text option if you want to create your own or have the studnets create one.

Zipped folder image resources. There are multiple folders with a variety of images for you to use and/or share with your students. I've found having a collection of images ready for the students saves time when we are in a computer lab time crunch.

We the People- intro video from the Heritage Foundation

Four possible options for student extension activities

Resource links for student extension activities. The Interactive COnstitution fron the National Constitution Center is great.

Constitution Day Lesson Resources 2012 Presentation Site

2012 Election Resources

It's election season again! If your students are like mine, they have lots of questions regarding the election. Often , I get questions about how do I know what I am? Which candidate? With so much to cover in the curriculum, it's hard to take time out to discuss the 2012 election outside of a government class...but there are ways. September 17th, Constitution Day, is a great time to talk about Article II and the Electoral College. Also, this could be used to talk about the election in that context and how things have changed from the Founding Era.

The election was just one of many hot topics this weekend at the county Constitution Day workshop. A few colleagues and awesome teachers asked me if I knew of quizzes students could take. But of course! However they were linked school. This is the inspiration for this posting. Below I have linked three online quizzes you can use with your students to see where they fit on the political spectrum by candidate, party, and more. Click on thequiz name/link and enjoy!

I Side With 

Students can take an election quiz with questions regarding social, environmental, economic, domestic policy, healthcare, foreign policy, immigration, and science issues. The quiz will let you know how well you match up with the presidential candidates, California voters, and American Voters. Also, it will give you a percentage of how you side with the Democratic, Green, Republican, and Libertarian Parties.

Party Match Quiz  

Students can take a quiz based on questions relating to individual rights, domestic issues, economic issues, and defense issues. It will let you know how the user ranks in agreement with the political parties and political leaders by personal and economic percentages.

Where do you fit?- PEW Political Quiz 

Answer 12 questions that were part of a national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, and find out where you fit on the partisan political spectrum. You can also compare results to how you compare with others by age, sex, race, religion and candidate.