FoundingDocs2013

The history coordinator for Newton (Lucia Sullivan) emailed this article to us, and I wanted to share it here with all of you. It's a great perspective on how we, as historians, must work hard to present as essays as history teachers. He talks about how to frame content, essays, and primary source evidence in a meaningful way that is accessible for all students. Given the topics brought up by this course, it seemed fairly germane.

Allows students to examine the famous painting of the Declaration of Independence.

Game that helps students in grades 5-8 understand what led to the Declaration of Independence.  This is the first of a number of lessons that the kids can take part in.

Great lesson on the Declaration of Independence.  It includes 8 activities that allow students to look at historical connections and primary sources.

An article is this week's New Yorker, By Jeffrey Toobin. He talks about problems with the Constitution and challenges conventional wisdom that it is a sacred document. This link just shows you the first page - must be a subscriber to read the whole thing. Might be worth checking it out in your school library or a new stand, though, the article seems like one I might use with my students.

This might be a stretch for elementary and middle school. But I think it's workable for 8th grade and beyond. The lesson has students learning about the distinction between a democratic republic and direct democracy using Federalist paper No. 10

Agreed about the stretch. I would even say this is too tough for grade 8 since the vocab is dense. Would need a lot of infrastructure to get kids prepared.

This a is a topic list organized by Cornell Law of decisions made by the Supreme Court. Good resource for possible research projects.

Tough read for kids but great background for teachers.

What doesn't the Standford History Education Group have on their site? The site offers everything from lesson plans, to primary source materials, to pedagogical approaches to teaching history, to assessment materials. This site has especially great tools for getting students to think like historians!

I love the section of "reading like A Historian".

The American Civil Liberties Union has a vast array of materials hosted on their site. Perhaps the materials of greatest use to teachers are the frequent "news releases" about issues pertaining to our individual freedoms that are currently in the news.

The is a site that teachers should bookmark and read weekly because it keeps you up to date with the issues of the day.

Documentary from the American Social History Project. It looks at the American Revolution from a social history perspective. It follows the events of the 1770s from the perspective of a Boston shoemaker. Interesting take. I've found the documentaries produced by this organization to be excellent.

Excellent site in general. The video and audio are high quality and, I am sure, are quite accessible for students of all level.s

This is a great article that depicts Woodrow Wilson's arrival for his inauguration in 1913 and how dismayed he was to find there was no crowd. The article gives details on the momentum of the women's movement as a group and not just certain individuals.

I would say this is an article about the development of the women's movement. Eleanor Roosevelt, in her own quiet but interesting way, was quite the supporter of women's rights. While not for student reading at elementary and middle, this article provides great background info.

This site has a number of podcasts summarizing Supreme Court decisions that influence the rights of students. I like that these podcasts are (mostly) in student-friendly language. I also like the idea of using podcasts as a way of accessing auditory learners and addressing the skill of note-taking and picking out key informaton.

I agree, Becca, that this site is quite accessible for students because of the podcasts. The cases they provide are all ones that could be used in the classroom.

This website is great, because it sorts court cases by topic/amendment addressed. Also, because it's from the ACLU, all of the issues revolve around people's rights in a concrete way, which makes it accessible for students.

Zach, I do like the way the site is organized. It makes such a difference when the site does not fight the user.

Lesson plan from scholastic on women's suffrage for grades 6-8.

Gr. 8 lesson plan on comparing the Articles of Confederation with the U.S. Constitution.

Included is a document description, a transcript, the ten amendments, a timeline and games to play. The games include The Court and Democracy, Law, Power and Personality and The First Hundred Years. Each game begins with a question and then you can scroll over certain areas. Interesting facts in these games.

This site has good pdf links to all the founding documents.  Additionally, it includes a section on using the Constitution and connecting it to current events.  I have used this before in class and it works great (and it includes recent news - from the past week!).  It also includes various lessons to use too.

The Bill of Rights institute offers a wealth of materials for teachers. In addition to copies of each of the Founding Documents and accompanying essays about each, there are many other materials on the site. Among my favorite resources are the many lesson plans made for teachers of all levels.

The Oyez Project is the best site available for Supreme Court decisions and business currently before the court. As I write this description, there are currently two articles about the court considering same-sex marriage issues on the front page.