Legislative Branch, Day 3 - Class Recap

The office of Speaker of the House, which is currently controlled by Republicans, and Representative Paul Ryan. Photo taken in 2010.

Hi everyone,

We continued looking into the Legislative Branch today and what it looks like as far as representatives. Here's the recap for today:

Learning Targets Addressed:
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 levels of U.S. government.

Soundtrack: "Abc" by The Jackson 5. Selected for today because it is like the stages for how a bill becomes a law: A) Committee, B) Full House/Senate, C) President signs. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 4/5/17:
News Brief – Sarah
Review Oregon Reps
Create Bills
115th Congress

Homework: Read the blog. Create a bill idea if you did not in class. Finish the Oregon representatives handout and the 115th Congress profile. Next news brief: Jesus.

News Brief: Sarah had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: OregonLive.com - Legislature must step up; grow the pie to fund education: Letters to the editor. Sarah did a good job talking about the current budget situation and how Oregon is currently 47th out of 50 states in terms of graduation rate. We also talked a bit about how Oregon schools are funded and what the current situation might result in for Beaverton schools given the forecast budget.

Jesus was selected for the next news brief. After the news brief, all juniors were dismissed to do ACT bubbling, so we had a bit of a condensed class at the end of the day.

Review Oregon Reps: Last class, we started working on this assignment, which is about knowing who represents Oregon at the federal level in Congress. We went through the assignment together, noting who your congressional representative is and where they are on the political spectrum.

Create a Bill: This was in preparation for next class, when we will be doing a simulation of Congress and the legislative process. Here were the questions I wanted you to answer in your bill proposals:

1. What are you proposing?
2. Who will it impact?
3. When will it begin or end?
4. Where (which states) will be impacted?
5. Why should this bill pass?
6. How much will it cost?

Bring these in next class if you did not turn them in today, please!

115th Congress: The last new piece from today was this handout, looking at the demographics of the current representatives in congress:

Google Drive - 115th Congress Profile Assignment

Here is a link to the website/pdf document that has the answers:

HSDL.org - Membership of the 115th Congress: A Profile

I hope this helps!

For the rest of the class, we were in class with Chromebooks, working on the Oregon representatives handout, as well as the 115th Congress paper and creating bills. Here is the handout that I passed out last class:

Google Drive - Oregon Representatives in Congress Handout

The main point here is to know who our representatives are and what they believe. It is important that we know who represents us in Congress, and what their ideas are!

Thanks for your work on this! See you next class, when we will be creating legislation of our own!