The Constitution, Day 1 - Class Recap

The World War I Memorial Stonehenge replica in Goldendale, Washington, overlooking the Columbia River Gorge and Mt. Hood. Photo taken in 2015!

Hi everyone,

I enjoyed hearing about your new countries today in class, as we continued to look at the basics of how the United States government works and specifically, the Constitution. Here's what happened today:

Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 2: I can demonstrate an understanding of the role of governments in current issues.
Knowledge LT 5: I can demonstrate an understanding of the principles, structures, and functions of different branches of U.S. government.

Soundtrack: "Power [Radio Edit]" by Kanye West. Selected for today because "no one man should have all that power" when it comes to government, which the Constitution made sure of!

AGENDA 9/28/16:
News Brief – Halle/Jade
The First Debate/Share Nations
The Constitution
Bill of Rights

Homework: Read the blog. Next news brief: Kira.

News Brief: Today's news brief was brought in by Halle, who selected an article about this story to talk about: WashingtonPost.com - Washington mall shooting suspect confesses to killings. We discussed this story, which was right up the I-5 freeway from us here in Oregon, as well as what happened with the reaction to this horrible event. I also mentioned that there had been a school shooting in South Carolina right before class. It's important that we are engaged citizens, so we can participate in our democracy and try and figure out a way to prevent these events from happening.

Jade also presented her news brief today, which was about this article: CNN.com - Tulsa police officer charged with manslaughter. This relates to the ongoing focus on police violence, especially in regards to people of color in our country.

Thanks, Halle and Jade for bringing in these important stories to our class. Kira volunteered for the next news brief.

The First Debate/Share Nations: As part of the News Brief section, I definitely wanted to talk about the debate: CNN.com - The first presidential debate in under 2 minutes. We watched this video and discussed the first presidential debate of the general election, which was Monday night between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It was interesting to hear different student perspectives on it! I also showed the latest FiveThirtyEight.com projection map for what the current polls are suggesting will happen on Election Day in November.

Again, this was creating your own nation, which is a break away of some of the western states from the United States. In groups of 2 or 3, this was the assignment, which were presented in class: 

Google Drive - Creation of a Nation Assignment

I enjoyed listening to these presentations and hearing about your proposed ideas for what a new country should look like! Thank you for your effort on this. I know we spent a large part of class on this, and I just thought it was a fun way to look at what our ideal governments might look like. I also really loved the flags, which I will aim to have up on the walls soon!

The Constitution: Next, I directed students back to our Google Classroom page to click on this handout/worksheet, which looks at different aspects of what makes up the United States Constitution:

Google Drive - Constitution and Bill of Rights Handout

We barely had a chance to start this in class, after learning about how to open this and edit it using the Kami software for the Chromebooks. If you want to continue to work on completing this outside of class, here is a copy of the Constitution to look at. Next class, we'll have some time to work on this together, before going over the answers, as it is a study guide.

Please keep this packet, as you will be using it to study for an upcoming test on the Constitution.

The Bill of Rights: We did not get to the Bill of Rights today, so we will look more in depth at this next class. Thanks for your hard work today! I really appreciate your attendance in class and focus!