Day 4

Content for Study

The Constitution and amendments
NCSS Theme
Power, Authority, and Governance
Rationale
Students need to be able to understand and interpret the document that governs our country as well as
how and why it has been changed throughout the span of its existence.
Unit Goals
Students will describe what the Constitution is, the amending process, and what some of the
amendments are that have been made already.
Pre-assessment
Students will use Quizlet live. Students are broken into teams where they must compete to answer
questions on quizlet.com about constitution and what freedoms it protects.
Post-assessment
Students will create a Bio-project related to a key founding father. Options are George Washington,
James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason, and Elbridge Gerry. Students
will sign up for their person the 1st day of the Unit. Students will read a biography of their person and do
the following tasks:
 Create a Bio-cube of their founding father
 Create a Bio-poem
 Create a Bottle person
In addition, students will choose two of the following to also include
 Create a timeline of important event that occurred in your person’s life time.
 Create a diary or Journal for your person with a minimum of 4 entries. Each entry should be at
least four paragraphs long.
 Create an obituary, birth certificate, and death certificate for your person.
On the last day, students will share their Bio-projects in groups. (The groups will be made so that no one
at a group should have the same person)
Learning Standards
SS.5.C.1.2: Define a constitution, and discuss its purposes.
SS.5.A.5.10: Examine the significance of the Constitution including its key political concepts, origins of
those concepts, and their role in American democracy
SS.5.C.2.3: Analyze how the Constitution has expanded voting rights from our nation's early history to
today.
SS.5.A.1.2: Utilize timelines to identify and discuss American History time periods.
LAFS.5.W.1.3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective
technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

Objectives
Students will examine how amendments to the constitution have expanded voting rights through time.
Students will be able to describe the 27 amendments that were added to the Constitution.
Materials
https://prezi.com/p/o_obq8_e07kk/
Description cards
Procedures
Students will create a timeline for the 27 amendments in their Social Studies Notebooks.
Students receive each of the amendments, their dates of creation and what they did. Students must cut
them out and put them on a timeline in their notebooks. As the class talks about each amendment, the
teacher leads a discussion to get students to talk about the importance of each and what they
protected.
Change the Vote Activity
 The teacher passes out a card with a description of a person. It will include their race, age,
occupation, and if they own property.
 All of the students move to one side of the room.
 The teacher will announce a year. With it will be a short description of what types of people can
legally vote.
 Based on the information on their card, the students will decide whether or not their person can
vote. If they can vote they move to the other side of the room.
 The teacher follows a timeline (https://prezi.com/p/o_obq8_e07kk/) that shows students the
amendments and laws that have been passed to change the voting rights.
 Once the timeline has reached present day, students will discuss how amendments have
changed the voting laws and how allowing new people to vote might change the outcome of the
elections.
 Students will write a journal entry from the point of view of the person on their card. The entry
will be about that person’s experience of voting for the first time.
 Accommodations: The cards for ESE/ESOL students will include a picture of the person described
on their card. The teacher may show pictures of the type of people allowed to vote at each point
in history. This way the student may match their picture with the types of people allowed to
vote. When writing, students may draw a picture of their person voting for the first time and
include one or two simple sentences depending on their abilities and proficiency level with
English.
Formal Assessment
The Journal entry as well as the discussions throughout the class act as a formal assessment.