Making Civics Real: Freedom of Religion

Ninth-grade civics teacher Kristen Borges involves her students at Southwest High School in Minnesota in a simulation of a U.S. Supreme Court hearing on a First Amendment case. 

Students assume the roles of Supreme Court justices, attorneys for the school district, and attorneys for the families. They first work in groups to prepare for the hearing, then participate in the hearing, and finally, debrief their experiences and write short papers stating their positions on the case. 

The methodologies highlighted in this lesson include questioning strategies and mock trials.

Making Civics Real: Electoral Politics

This program shows the conclusion of a twelve-week civic engagement unit developed by the national Student Voices program. 

Jose' Velazquez's twelfth grade students at University High School in New Jersey divide into small groups to brainstorm and research community issues, prioritize the issues on the basis of what they have learned, present their findings to the class both orally and through a visual presentation, and develop a whole-class consensus on a youth agenda that they present to the mayoral candidates in a televised question-and-answer forum. 

The methodologies highlighted in this lesson include issue identification and consensus building.

Making Civics Real: Public Policy and the Federal Budget

Leslie Martin’s ninth-graders at West Forsyth High School in North Carolina create, present, revise, and defend a federal budget, and then reflect on what they have learned. After assuming the roles of the President and his or her advisors to create a federal budget, students are introduced to the actual 2001 federal budget, and in a whole-class discussion, discuss some key concepts involved in creating it. Next, students return to cooperative learning groups, revise their budgets based on what they learned, present their revised budgets, and simulate a Congressional hearing. This lesson highlights the integration of teacher-directed instruction with small-group work.

Making Civics Real: Constitutional Convention

Matt Johnson teaches an Advanced Placement (AP) Comparative Government class to seniors at Benjamin Banneker Senior High School in Washington, DC. In this lesson, his twelfth grade students create a constitution for a hypothetical country called Permistan. Matt Johnson uses this lesson to help students review for their final exam and the AP exam by having them draw on what they have learned during the semester about international governments. Students work in cooperative learning groups to discuss and debate issues relating to the executive and legislative branches of government. The lesson closes with a simulation of a constitutional convention. Simulation is the primary methodology highlighted in this lesson.

Making Civics Real: Patriotism and Foreign Policy

The students in this program are seniors at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a public magnet school in Washington, DC. 

In this lesson, U.S. government teacher Alice Chandler has her students create a Museum of Patriotism and Foreign Policy. The lesson alternates between whole-class discussion and small-group committee work as students create a gallery for the museum using their respective arts concentration as the medium. 

The lesson concludes with students presenting their gallery contributions in dance, music, theatrical performances, and visual presentations, along with rationales for their selections. This lesson highlights small-group work as a constructivist methodology.

Making Civics Real: Civic Engagement

This program shows a group of eleventh and twelfth grade students at Anoka High School in Minnesota engaging in service learning - a requirement for graduation. 

In this human geography class taught by Bill Mittlefehldt, students work in teams to define a project, choose and meet with a community partner who can help educate them about the issue and its current status, conduct further research, and present the problem and a proposed solution first to their peers, and then to a special session of the Anoka City Council. 

The primary methodology presented in this lesson is service learning.

Making Civics Real: Controversial Public Policy Issues

In this twelfth grade law class at Champlin Park High School in Minnesota, JoEllen Ambrose engages students in a structured discussion of a highly controversial issue - racial profiling - and connects student learning both to their study of due process in constitutional law and police procedure in criminal law. 

Students begin by completing an opinion poll, which they discuss as a group. Students are then put into pairs in which they conduct research on the topic. Next, students participate in a debate in which each partnership argues both sides of the issue. 

A debriefing discussion completes the lesson. The methodologies highlighted in this lesson include role playing and structured academic controversy.

Making Civics Real: Rights and Responsibilities of Students

Students in Matt Johnson’s 12th-grade law course at Benjamin Banneker Senior High School in Washington, DC, engage in a culminating activity to help them review and apply what they have learned. Students write and distribute one-page briefs of Supreme Court cases they have studied. Next, students are assigned to small groups and given hypothetical cases related to student rights cases from the Supreme Court’s 2001-2002 term. Students prepare their cases and present them to the Justices. Justices deliberate and present majority and dissenting opinions, after which the class discusses both the process and the disposition of the cases. This lesson highlights the use of case studies for synthesis and analysis.

Primary Sources: Workshops in American History - The Virginia Company: America's Corporate Beginnings

This workshop tells the story of America's corporate beginnings and explores Jamestown as a business operation. Using primary source documents, you can examine the Virginia Company's settlement in Jamestown as a case study in colonial economics and social dynamics, and debate why it failed and whether failure was avoidable. 

Primary Sources: Workshops in American History - Common Sense and the American Revolution: The Power of the Printed Word

This workshop explores the power and importance of America's first "bestseller," Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Using the language of ordinary folk, Paine called for revolution and challenged many commonly held assumptions about government and the colonies' relationship to England. By looking at Common Sense, comparing it with the local declarations of independence, and then comparing it with the Declaration of Independence, you can explore the growing support for American independence in the 1770s.