Bill of Rights Children's Book

I was trying to think of a fun way to teach the Bill of Rights, together my PLC came up with students making a children's book that explained each amendment! The students loved this activity as they love everything creative and it helped them cement the amendments in their brain a little more. The instructions were simply to make a children's book that included each amendment in the Bill of Rights with elementary student friendly language explaining what each amendment means as well as a picture. They all turned out really well! We took twenty minutes to have "story time" where everyone had a chance to read their book to their group. They had a blast.

Although this activity was fun, I have plans for next year involving a Bill of Rights board game that students would create....stay tuned. :) 

Preamble to the Constitution Activity

Ohhh, teaching government. I have such a love/hate relationship with teaching government. I have some fun simulations but I also have some days that are a little painful for both me and the students.

Last year I really messed up the preamble. It was a painful train wreck of a lesson. So this year, I set out to figure something else out. 

While searching around online for different lesson ideas, I often find lessons that are half complete or don't totally make sense and I have to piece them together using parts of what I found and the rest of it comes from my imagination. It's actually kind of fun! 

I start with a small group simulation where they are stranded on a desert island and they have some problems they need to solve (all relating to parts of the Preamble, they figure this out later). You can check out the simulation [for free!] here.

After we have a discussion about the problems that the colonists had after the revolutionary war, the preamble is introduced. Then the poster project is introduced.

In groups, the students have to brainstorm three ways our government is currently upholding a specific part of the preamble. Students were a lot more creative with this than I thought they would be! A popular topic was Obamacare for "promote the general welfare." Then students create a poster explaining those three issues, writing a letter to the current president from a founding father giving him advice about how to work towards their assigned part of the preamble. They also have to assemble hashtags that relate to their part of the preamble. 

At the end, we will do a gallery walk where students walk around and note the different issues related to the preamble. 

It was a pretty quick little lesson! It took my kids two class periods (two hours) to do the poster and the gallery walk.

Find the activity worksheet [for free!] here.

Thanks for letting me steal, random teacher on the internet! Unfortunately I didn't save the website because it didn't have a ton of information on it, a lot of it I had to piece together myself.