Monday, February 4, 2013

Week of February 4th


Welcome back from Super Bowl weekend!  This week we continue our Constitution unit from Amendments to Supreme Court cases.

Monday:
1. HW due from Friday: Amendment Proposals. Students will bring in formal Amendment Proposals and put them to a 2/3 vote of a mock House of Reps and Senate. Then, we’ll take a follow-up vote of mock state legislatures to put it to the ¾ test.  We’ll discuss why the founders created such a rigorous ratification process.
2. Review for Amendment quiz tomorrow! Students will need to identify all amendments in the Bill of Rights, plus the Reconstruction Amendments (13,14,15), and the Women’s Suffrage Amendment (19). Students will connect Amendments with legal scenarios, which we have used in class.
*There will be an extra help/study session tomorrow before school 8-9am.

Tuesday:
1. Amendment Quiz (See above for details).
2. Intro to Supreme Court - We’ll be previewing vocab related to our highest court, then we’ll watch an interview and slide show on recent appointee Justice Sotomayor and read details on other current justices.

Wednesday:
Supreme Court Cases – Day 1
1. Small groups will be reading Supreme Court decision overviews on key cases that have significantly shaped Americans’ lives. Several of the cases will be ones that affected teenagers specifically.
HW: Read So You Wanna Be a Supreme Court Justice? And answer questions 1-5 on the back.

Thursday:
Supreme Court Cases – Day 2
1.  Groups will be presenting their case details to the whole class via  a quick presentation and a gallery walk poster. Students will collect critical details from other cases through a gallery walk note-taking activity.

Friday:
1. Guest Speaker! School Resource Officer Morzov will be on hand to provide a law enforcement perspective on the Constitution and relevant Supreme Court decisions.
2. Students will get a summarizing study guide for our US Constitution Standard next week. Students will be selecting essay questions on Monday and will be allowed to prepare an outline for a short response in-class on test day.