TITLE: REORGANIZING THE BILL OF RIGHTS
AUTHOR: Scott Wallace, South Valley Middle School, Platteville,CO.
GRADE LEVEL: 8TH GRADE
OVERVIEW: This lesson is a culminating activity to be used at the end of a
unit on the Bill of Rights. It allows my students to become aware of the
main ideas and importance of the remaining 16 amendments not covered in
class. I have used this lesson as an individual writing assignment, but
find it much more effective and fun used as an in-class activity.
PURPOSE: The purpose of the activity is to ask students to look critically
at the 26 amendments. Are some more important than others? Can we
live without some of them? Do some of them address similar issues?
OBJECTIVES: By the end of the activity, the students will;
a) be able to identify the topics of amendments not covered in class.
b) Compare and contrast topics covered in the 26 amendments and group
them according to similar topics.
c) Evaluate amendments in terms of importance to their daily lives or to
the everyday function of the government.
RESOURCES/MATERIALS: textbook that contains all 26 amendments.
ACTIVITIES:
1) After covering the first ten amendments in class in previous
lessons, inform the students that they will be role-playing a
Constitutional Convention that has been charged with reorganizing the 26
amendments back to 10.
2) Break class into groups of 3 or 4 students. Tell each group
that they may reorganize in any way that they want. They may delete
amendments that currently exist, combine amendments that have similar
topics, or introduce new amendments. Allow groups at least one class
period to work on their task.
3) After the small groups have completed their task, bring the
class back together. Each group then introduces their proposal.
4) The class is then given time for informal debate and
discussion over the various proposals. At this point the large group must
formally debate and vote on the amendments they want to keep.
TYING IT ALL TOGETHER: After the students finish their debate and vote,
open class up for discussion over their feelings as to how things went.
You will find that their will have been quite a bit of disagreement as to
what's important and what isn't.
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