This unit aims to cultivate critical thinking skills in students as they explore microeconomics and macroeconomics, examining the role of government in the economy through lessons that encourage analysis, evaluation, and understanding of economic principles and government interventions.
Immigration: Is History Repeating Itself?
This lesson offers your students the opportunity to dig more into the historical and contemporary status of immigration in America through examining primary source documents and engaging with multiple perspectives.
Foundations of Civics and Economics
This unit on civics fosters critical thinking skills in students as they engage with topics in government, democracy, and U.S. history, providing comprehensive lesson plans that encourage deep analysis, evaluation, and reflection on the principles and dynamics of civic life.
The Struggle for Equal Rights from the Founding to Today
In this two‐part lesson, students will be introduced to the idea of equal rights and explore the historical roots of the idea, times where it has fallen short in American history, and movements to better live up to its standard.
Rule of Law and the Death Penalty
Students will work together to analyze key points of different Supreme Court cases and apply their analysis to evaluate to what extent the Constitution merits capital punishment.
Bell Ringer: Life and Legacy of Frederick Douglass
Museum curator for the National Capital Parks – East Ka’mal McClarin – talks about the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass.
Bell Ringer: The Geary Act
Professors Mae Ngai and Josh Blackman explain the nature of the Geary Act, the impact on the Chinese in the late 1800s and its relevance today.
Slavery in America: From the Founding to America’s Second Founding – Module 12 of Constitution 101
Slavery was embedded into America’s fabric by the time of the framing and ratification of the Constitution. At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates refused to write the word “slavery” or enshrine a “right to property in men” in the Constitution’s text, but they did compromise on the issue of slavery, writing important protections for slaveholders into our nation’s charter. Debates over slavery continued (and increased) in the decades to come, culminating in Abraham Lincoln’s election as America’s first anti-slavery president, Southern secession, and the Civil War. Following this bloody war, the Reconstruction Republicans worked to rebuild our nation on a stronger constitutional foundation, passing our nation’s first civil rights laws and ratifying the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. These amendments ended slavery, wrote the Declaration of Independence’s promise of freedom and equality into the Constitution, and promised to end racial discrimination in voting. Many scholars refer to this key period as America’s “Second Founding.”
Bell Ringer: Landmark Legislation: Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, talks about the creation of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, reactions to the passage of this act, and some of the successes and challenges of the act.
History of State Constitutions
Students watch, analyze, and respond to video clips that detail the goals of the writers of the first state constitutions, explore historical the background, and and examine Virginia’s, Pennsylvania’s, or Massachusetts’ first state constitutions.