I laid out 3 tables with information on each of the three topics for students, including replica and typed versions of the documents. Each student was given a packet of papers with questions to work on as a group at each station. Some of the questions were designed just to get them to look through the documents for answers, while other were to make them apply the knowledge and make their own opinions. I also left out post it notes at each table, encouraging students to ask questions that would "Stump the Teacher" that I would research the answers for them. The next day I gave them a sheet with the answers to the stump the teacher questions and we discussed them in class.
The U.S. Constitution
At the table with the U.S. Constitution, students were asked questions they could locate by looking the Constitution, such as:
How many articles are in the Constitution?
What powers do article II, Section II grant?
List two powers denied to the states.
What branch has the power to collect taxes?
How many senators does each state elect?
I used these questions to get the students actively looking through the Constitution and developing their questions for me. I then asked some higher level questions to try and get the students thinking, such as:
Why is article V important?
Look through the list of amendments and see if there are any that surprise you or you disagree with.
Unfortunately, I did not get too many responses to the second question. I did bring things to the students' attention, like I found it shocking women were not allowed to vote until 1920.
The Bill of Rights
At the table for The Bill of Rights, students were again asked basic and higher level questions. The questions asked for the Bill of Rights were as follows:
What does the 8th Amendment protect citizens against?
Why is the First Amendment important?
What do you think probable cause means?
List 3 protections of the 5th Amendment.
What do you think are the most important amendments in The Bill of Rights?
Do you think any of the amendments are no longer relevant?
In this section I received a much better student response on the higher level questions. A student who hunted made his case that the Second Amendment was most important. Other students argued that First and Fifth amendments were the most important to them. Several students also felt the amendment preventing the forced quartering of soldiers was no longer relevant. To make the student think more about the amendment against quartering soldiers, I proposed the hypothetical situation that if the country was invaded in the future, would she want to feed and house a platoon of soldiers.
I also liked having the students explain parts of The Bill of Rights. Each amendment is at least several sentences, forcing them to pull out key words and phrases and describe them in their own words. Any time a student tried to read word for word from The Bill of Rights, I would ask them to explain what it meant to the class.
How a Bill Becomes a Law
In this section I had a flowchart showing the process of how a bill becomes a law. The first thing that I had the students do was fill in the blank flowchart on the right in their own words while reading the original on the left. I felt it was important to reinforce the process, while also giving each of the students another study guide. I then gave them a set of questions just like in the other sections.
Out of the approximately 10,000 bills proposed each year, how many do you think become law?
What is the purpose of the conference committee?
When Congress passes a bill and sends it to the President, what are the President's 2 options?
What majority is needed in both houses to override a veto?
How often do you think vetoes are overridden? Explain your answer.
After the students had been to all 3 tables we reviewed the answers to the questions and discussed some of their opinions on the activity. Overall the student response to the project was very positive. We also went through their stump the teacher questions, of which there were four I could not answer off the top of my head. I am including them here in case anyone is curious about them, maybe you can use them to stump your students and get them to research the answers.
What does ex post facto law mean?
This I actually did have the correct answer to, but not the correct latin phrase, "from the action".
Where does separation of church and state appear?
The phrase never appears in either the Constitution or The Bill of Rights. The line has been inferred from
the First Amendment by the Supreme Court.
Why was the 20th Amendment created?
The 20th Amendment reduced the "lame duck" period for Congress and the President from March to
January.
When was the most recent overridden veto?
George W. Bush on July 15, 2008. The President's veto was overridden, passing the Medicare
Improvements for Patients and Providers Act.
