Activities

Readings

  • The Politics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained- Kelly, Dacombe, Farndon, et al.
  • The US Constitution: An Owner's Manual- Matranga, Stuart

Multimedia

  • "Crash Course"- John Green's engaging videos that contextualize topics within respective era
  • Google Slides Presentations
  • "Drunk History"- comical videos poking fun at historical events

Interactive/Collaborative Work

  • Take a Stand Debates: topics- involvement in wars, ethical dilemmas, internment of citizens, etc
  • Socratic Seminars: Student centered, text driven discussions about various topics. Topics include- consumerism, effects of industrial farming, human capacity for evil, etc
  • Daily Focus Questions- Bellwork writing and discussions about: current events, politics in the past and present, etc
  • Various text assignments- Think, Pair, Share readings
  • Census/ survey creation and distribution
  • Jigsaws-students serve as "resident experts"-- they are assigned a portion of a text to read, process, and present to their classmates
  • Parliamentary Debate- two teams prepare cases based off of provided resources. The cases are created and presented in the debate.

Independent Work

  • Constitution research
  • Bill of Rights Comparison
  • Governing Systems research project

Writing

  • Daily Focus ?s- bellwork questions that begin most classes
  • Short answer essays

Social Emotional Growth

Classroom activities intentionally focus on students' social-emotional development in addition to academic skills. Any liberal arts education ought to embed opportunities in the curriculum for students to practice the skills and understandings necessary to communicate, collaborate, and otherwise interact with their peers. Students will often work in pairs and groups to accomplish a shared goal, and throughout the class will be asked to present their interpretive arguments to the class. For instance, students will debate, discuss, research, and interpret contentious historical topics and will be identifying areas of group consensus as well as disagreement. Topics history are often controversial and can be emotional, and developing the maturation to handle these issues in a civil academic atmosphere remains the major area of social and emotional development related to this subject. All topics that students confront with great depth and complexity will render possibilities to develop values, social-emotional awareness, and understandings; this course both creates and capitalizes on teachable moments.