The Constitution, Day 3 - Class Recap

The African American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C. The soldiers are carrying guns, which relates to the Second Amendment! Photo taken in 2010.

Hi everyone,

We had another good day in class today with looking more into the First Amendment and started the Second Amendment. Here's what happened:

Learning Targets Addressed:

Knowledge LT 2: I can demonstrate an understanding of the role of governments in current issues.
Knowledge LT 4: I can explain how different ideological movements and philosophies shape politics.
Knowledge LT 5: I can demonstrate an understanding of the principles, structures, and functions of different branches of U.S. government.

Soundtrack: "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns n' Roses. Selected for today because we are about to start looking at the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is about the right to have guns. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 10/4/16:
News Brief - Sarah Beth
Constitution Test
Tinker v. Des Moines
Second Amendment

Homework: Read the blog! Watch the Vice Presidential debate tonight! Next news brief: Kenneth S.
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News Brief: Sarah Beth had the news brief today and selected this story to talk about with the class: NYTimes.com - Carolina Boy, 14, Held After Father Is Killed and 3 Are Shot at School. We discussed this tragic event as well as how it relates to the judicial and executive branches of government (and relates to the Second Amendment) before talking about the national election.

Tonight is the only Vice Presidential debate of the year, between Republican Governor Mike Pence and Democratic Senator Tim Kaine. We talked for a bit about the debate, noting that it is on at 6 PM tonight. We also looked at the updated Electoral College polling map of predictions from FiveThirtyEight.com

We also talked a bit about the weekend, before moving on.

Kennth S. was selected for the next news brief.

Constitution Test: As promised! I hope that this went well for everyone. I will try to have them graded and entered later today. The first 10 questions were about the philosophy of U.S. Government, the second 10 questions were about the branches of government/checks of power, and the last 10 questions were about the Bill of Rights.

Tinker v. Des Moines: This was about the First Amendment protections, and I had students take notes on their Chromebooks as I went through this PowerPoint on some interesting cases that relate to student rights:

Google Drive - First Amendment Case Studies

We looked at some specifics of the cases, including the speech in the Bethel case and an article about the reaction from 2009 when the Westview Prowl student newspaper published an article about sex on campus.

After going through the PowerPoint, I asked students to open this document on Google Classroom and work on the answers using Kami:

Google Drive - Tinker v. Des Moines and Texas v. Johnson Cases

We went through these interesting cases and answers as a class - know them for future reference, please!

Second Amendment: To continue our look at the Bill of Rights, I asked students to note Pro and Con arguments for gun rights. We will watching a documentary on this next class, and move on to looking in depth at some of the other amendments.