InTASC Standard #10: Leadership and Collaboration. The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession.
One of my favorite parts of my teacher education has been the amount of times I have been able to collaborate with my peers on different lesson plans and ideas. I have found that I thoroughly enjoy being a part of a team at my middle school as well. Working with other teachers and being able to plan together is such a rewarding experience. When teachers collaborate we learn from one another and often pick up different strategies or ideas that we would have never thought about. The lesson plan shown below is an example of the many lessons I have created in collaboration with either my peers, my co-op, or with other team teachers from my co-op’s team. Since Melissa Exler is an Elementary Education Major and I am a Secondary Education Major, we have had different experiences in our lectures as well as our field experiences from Rider University. As a result, we brought very different techniques and ideas to the table when creating a middle school social studies lesson plan. It was interesting to see how our differing ideas came together to create a successful lesson plan that we team taught at the end. Overall, I view myself as a lifelong learner, and I believe everyone has something to offer and something I can learn from. By collaborating and learning from one another, we become better teachers for our students.
Constitution Lesson Plan 11/19/15
By: Regina Santangelo and Melissa Exler
Objective:
Students will be able to use effective communication, problem solving, and research/ close reading to examine the component parts and purpose of the US Constitution.
Students will be able to use the historical thinking skills of close reading and sourcing to examine and analyze a primary source and its language.
EQ: How did the US Constitution attempt to solve the problems created by the Articles of Confederation?
GQ1: What was the purpose of the Preamble?
GQ2: What was the purpose of the Legislative Branch?
GQ3: What was the purpose of the Judicial Branch?
GQ4: What was the purpose of the Executive Branch?
Standards:
K-8.7.Social Studies.6.1.3.3.A.6.1.8.A.3.b - Evaluate the effectiveness of the fundamental principles of the Constitution i.e. consent of the governed rule of law federalism limited government separation of powers checks and balances and individual rights in establishing a federal government that allows for growth and change over time.
K-8.7.Social Studies.6.1.3.3.A.6.1.8.A.3.d - Compare and contrast the Articles of Confederation and the UNITED STATES Constitution in terms of the decisionmaking powers of national government.
Formative Assessment:
Anticipatory set, class discussion, video/ discussion, multiple interactive sorts, make predictions based on learned knowledge
Procedure:
Students will be able to use effective communication, problem solving, and research/ close reading to examine the component parts and purpose of the US Constitution.
Students will be able to use the historical thinking skills of close reading and sourcing to examine and analyze a primary source and its language.
EQ: How did the US Constitution attempt to solve the problems created by the Articles of Confederation?
GQ1: What was the purpose of the Preamble?
GQ2: What was the purpose of the Legislative Branch?
GQ3: What was the purpose of the Judicial Branch?
GQ4: What was the purpose of the Executive Branch?
Standards:
K-8.7.Social Studies.6.1.3.3.A.6.1.8.A.3.b - Evaluate the effectiveness of the fundamental principles of the Constitution i.e. consent of the governed rule of law federalism limited government separation of powers checks and balances and individual rights in establishing a federal government that allows for growth and change over time.
K-8.7.Social Studies.6.1.3.3.A.6.1.8.A.3.d - Compare and contrast the Articles of Confederation and the UNITED STATES Constitution in terms of the decisionmaking powers of national government.
Formative Assessment:
Anticipatory set, class discussion, video/ discussion, multiple interactive sorts, make predictions based on learned knowledge
Procedure:
- ANTICIPATORY SET: “Last night your homework was to rank the top 8 problems of the Articles of Confederation from the biggest to the smallest problem and describe why it needed to be fixed. Discuss your choices with your table groups.”
- Give 3-5 minutes for students to set up chromebooks and discuss their options within their small groups.
- Teachers will ask students to then give a few examples of their number one choice. After a sample survey has been received from the room, teachers will ask students to go to a different corner for the top four and then have students stand in the middle of the room for the option “Other”. Teachers will ask two to three students in the “Other” category to share their opinions.
- Teachers will ask students “How do you predict that the constitution will fix these problems?” Give background information about the significance of the US constitution.
- Transition into group questions: “What rights do we have from the US Constitution?”
- Teachers will ask students 4 questions about the constitution in which they will raise their arms in a “Y-shape” over their head for “Yes” and place both hands on their head for “No”. These questions include:
- Yes or no-- At the age of 18, will you have the same voting rights as the President, Michael Jordan and Selena Gomez?
- Yes or no-- Will you automatically get a lawyer when you are charged with a crime if you can’t afford one?
- Yes or no-- Can you voice their opinion about the government through speaking, writing and organization?
- Yes or no-- Can the police search your house without a good reason?
- Teachers will explain that the first three questions were yes and the last one was no. They will then explain that the constitution’s purpose was to create a federal government and to make sure the people under this federal government had rights. Teachers will ask, “How do we know this? Let’s look at the language of the constitution!”
- Teachers will have students read the first sentence of the Preamble out loud as a class. After, the teachers will have students discuss in their groups what they think the Constitution means. Teachers will then explain that the Constitution was written over 200 years ago and the language is different. Teachers will then read a more modern version of the original Preamble sentence in order to ensure student understanding. Teachers will ask one last time what is the purpose of the Constitution. https://sites.google.com/site/constitutionstudyguide/home/parts-of-the-constitution
- Teachers will show students a video “I’m Just a Bill: Preamble”. Before the video is shown, students will be asked to keep in mind the language of the preamble and what the focus of the preamble was.
- Teachers will show students a sort of the 3 components of the Constitution on the smartboard. Students will be called on and asked to move the appropriate phrase to the correct component.
- Preamble-- “We the People”
- Articles (7)-- including the 3 Branches of Government
- Amendments (27)-- Bill of Rights
- A discussion will then be led by the teachers by transferring the bill’s progress through each form of government.
- Teachers will show students a chart demonstrating the 3 Branches of Government’s roles and have students help them to fill the chart in. Students will be able to see the power each branch is given and what their overall purpose entails. http://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/jaye.ramseysutter/Organizational%20Charts/three-branches-of-national-government/view
- While items are being recorded on the smartboard, students will be asked to fill in the chart they have been given on their individual chromebooks.
- WRAP UP: In the discussion boards in Google Classroom, tell everyone 2 things you would include in your own US Constitution if you were to rewrite it yourself.
- EXIT CARD: Ask them, in what ways were the Constitution and Articles of Confederation similar? In what ways were they different? Focus on the need to replace the Articles with the Constitution. Although the Constitution was a provision of the Articles of Confederation, demonstrate how we know that it still has changes that need to be made. Make predictions about what our country would be like today if we did not have the Constitution.