Students will learn about gerrymandering and analyze how it impacts our elections.
Supreme Court
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Reapportionment & Redistricting
Students will learn the causes and effects of gerrymandering, and how court decisions authorizing race-based gerrymandering have reshaped American politics and created complex legacies.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Presidents v. Press – How the Pentagon Papers Leak Set Up First Amendment Showdowns
Students will learn about the Pentagon Papers during Nixon’s presidency, the long history of U.S. presidents battling national security leaks and the role of a free press in America’s democracy.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Why Supreme Court Confirmations Have Become So Bitter (Mini Lesson)
As President Biden makes his first Supreme Court nomination, he is hoping for bipartisan support for nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Recent history of Supreme Court nominations have yielded bitter battles and guarded answers from nominees on their views of important legal issues.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Supreme Court Nominations an Confirmations
Students will examine the nomination and confirmation process for Supreme Court Justices and learn why the judges often reveal so little.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Citizens United v. F.E.C. and Modern Campaigning
Students will learn how the Watergate break-in changed the way political campaigns were funded, and what that means for today.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Japanese Americans Incarcerated
In the months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them American citizens, rounded up and imprisoned in internment camps. In 10 camps across the American West, Japanese Americans persevered for four years. Even after they were removed from their homes and places of business, these people created new communities within the camps.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Legacy of the Korematsu Decision
Students will learn how the U.S. government imprisoned 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most American citizens, during World War II and the lasting impact of a related Supreme Court ruling.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: School Integration – Political Cartoon Analysis
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case that declared that school segregation was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court announced its unanimous decision on May 17, 1954. It held that school segregation violated the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The following year the Court ordered desegregation “with all deliberate speed.” This lesson, or set of two possible lessons, uses the Library of Congress protocol for analyzing political cartoons as a means for examining integration efforts after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Case. The activities are designed for students to complete on their own or in small groups.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: The Legacy of Brown v. Board – Primary Source Analysis
Students will learn why much of the school integration achieved through cross-town busing has unraveled over the last few decades.
