The Constitution is A Living Document: A Project to Assess Knowledge and Understanding

The most important thing about this project, The Consitution is a Living Document, is how students truly internalize how the Constitution is not just some old stuffy document but really is alive in our lives and protects our rights and our democracy.  I have had students come back to me when they are in high school to tell me how much they got out of this project.  I have also had several students tell me they helped their immigrant parents pass the citizenship test.  They were able to teach their parents about our government.  My favorite is how many 8th-grade students tell me they are now interested in current events and regularly follow the news!

The purpose of this project, The Consitution is a Living Document, is to assess students’ knowledge and understanding of the Constitution.  The project is divided into 3 sections.  The first section focuses on the Constitution, particularly Articles 1, 2, and 3.  They will write an essay and then read 3 news articles that connect to each of these articles.  They will summarize the articles and analyze how this news event connects to each of these articles.  In Section 2, students will write an essay on the Bill of Rights and Amendments and read 7 more current events news articles, summarize them, and then analyze how each event connects to a specific amendment.  The third section includes a Conclusion essay in which they reflect back on what they learned about themselves, doing a project of this magnitude, and about the Constitution, and a Bibliography.  This is a comprehensive project and will take anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks.

For each section, I provide lesson plans with objectives and learning targets aligned with the Common Core Standards. teacher directions, student directions, handouts, graphic organizers, check-off sheets, and rubrics. This project could be easily modified to fit a shorter time frame. With modifications, it is appropriate for students in 6th through 12th grades.

This project is part of my unit: “Our Living Consitution” which is designed using the Into, Through, and Beyond model of lesson planning. This project can be taught independently, but it is an excellent summative assessment for all my lessons on the Constitution in my unit. The lessons in the Constitution unit can be used independently or as a supplement to what you already teach or as a whole.  Here is a summary of what is in the unit:

• Into Lessons: Creating Schema

Lesson 1: Overview of the Constitution of the United States of America Slideshow and Notetaker

Lesson 2: Origins of the Constitution Essential Terms and Notetaker 

Lesson 3: The Seven Principles of the Constitution

• Through Lessons: Learning the Content

Lesson 4: The Goals of the Preamble, which includes a Preamble Project

Lesson 5: The Three Branches of  Government: Articles 1, 2, and 3

Lesson 6: How a Bill Becomes a Law and Project

Lesson 7: Federalism and the System of Checks and Balances

Lesson 8: Articles 4-7

Lesson 9: The Bill of Rights Unit (and a Little About Amendments 11-27)

• Extras (from the Unit: Every Four Years… The Presidential Election)

Lesson 10: What Are Your Political Viewpoints?

Lesson 11: Major and Minor Political Parties

Lesson 12: A Brief History of Who Can Vote

Lesson 13: Nuts and Bolts of the Presidential Election

• Beyond Lessons: Summative Assessments

Study Guides and Tests are included, with many of the lessons

Two Comprehensive Projects to Assess Knowledge and Understanding:

• --The Constitution is a Living Document Project

• --The Bill of Rights Explained Project

1 Word document with 42 ready-to-print pages