FoundingDocs2013

Simple and short writings on major Supreme Court cases.  Very good when you need a quick description of the importance of  a case or a handout reading for the class.  This is part of PBS and their section on Supreme Court history.

This site offers a history of the death penalty through time, beginning with Hammurabi's Code. It provides brief overviews of each landmark moment presented, many including text excerpts from primary sources. Teachers may want to use this as a resource for information when teaching the 8th Amendment, rather than introduce students to the page itself as the information (as a result of the topic) can feel a bit overwhelming as a whole.

I've used this site before as a resource for debates on a variety of topics. I think it would work for that purpose with the death penalty as well. You are right, however, it is a bit overwhelming.... but fascinating, nevertheless.

Here is a great summary by the NYT about Supreme Court cases that revolves around student freedoms - it is a great catalyst for discussions and student involvement in politics and student government.

Fabulous site. Every high school student will be fascinated to read about cases involving school and teens. The SC cases are beautifully analyzed and very accessible for high school kids.

So helpful even for my middle school students, I think. I even learned some things! Who knew that 28 states still allow corporal punishment? I especially love the "impact" sections, which show how influential these rulings can be on future cases.

This is a card-matching game providing students with practice classifying information by culture. Key topics for comparison/contrast and sorting include citizenship requirements, legislative function, selection of the executive, characteristics of a jury, role of trial lawyers, law code, uses of the Death Penalty, use of slavery, position of women. Overall goal of lesson is to provide students with reinforcement of key ideas and talking points for considering the impact of Ancient Athenian and Ancient Roman democracy on the United States.

Great game for middle school students.

This will be perfect for my curriculum. It is nice to have a whole class of researchers helping me out! Have you used this before, Allison?

This website is a great glossary of many Supreme Court cases that dealt with interpreting the Bill of Rights. Some of the topics covered are Religious Liberty, Personal LIberty, Students, Freedom of Speech. This website is a great resource for anyone trying to teach the Bill of Rights through cases.

This website has lots of great resources for teaching the Bill of Rights, but this page does a nice job of organizing landmark cases by rights and giving brief, student friendly summaries which would be really helpful in teaching.

I particularly like the section specifically related to students and The Supreme Court. Thanks.

I have used this site for years to introduce the structure of our government and more. It is broken down by grade so every teacher, k-12 will find this incredibly useful. Great visuals and a better explanation of our confusing election process than I've ever seen.

This might work nicely for comparing ancient democracies to ours today, specifically comparing and contrasting the balance of power. It is accessible enough that my 7th graders could explore it on their own.

This site would be useful for high school students exploring the rights of felons to vote. It compares different state laws. The sidebar options would help set up students to debate the issue.

Rock the Vote, a movement to encourage young people to vote, provides a wealth of resources, in young person friendly language, about the importance of voting and how to register.

This is a great site for younger students to gain some knowledge about voting rights in this country. Its very easy to navigate, kid friendly and presents brief amounts of text on each page. 3rd-5th graders would find this a helpful introduction to voting rights.

This is a very useful website for the elementary classroom. I've had students do research using this site. It definitely over simplifies the amendments, but for yound learners it makes them understandable. Lots of great parent and teacher links too!

This is a link to a 1997 article/piece from the Los Angeles Times that summarizes who was/was not a citizen at various points throughout US History.

This is the US government's Immigration website. On the site, you can find information about how to become a US Citizen.

I actually found this site after I read Janet's piece on narrative in history. The article that we read this week on the creation of the Constitution made me think of this site, as that piece drove home the power of narrative to engage learners. This site offers a great outline for those of us in the position to teach the writing of historical narrative.

Thanks for sharing. This is such a useful extention to the piece that Marshall and I wrote. Very important points are made to differentiate historical narrative from all other narratives - important to be true to the history as we weave the narrative.

I really enjoy starting each unit I do with a combination of texts and images, mainly primary sources, for students to observe and start to form impressions and questions. These LOC primary source sets are great for this!

Thanks for sharing your teaching strategy!

This is an interesting NYT article that discusses America's view of the Constitution, and the impact the Constitution had on the rest of the world. It chronicles the ways other countries were impacted by the Constitution. For instance, countries that created Constitutions strikingly similar to the U.S.

Everyone should read this article! It could be the foundation for one of our online sessions. Note the remark: "America is in danger, I think, of becoming something of a legal backwater" .

This is a great video explanation of the Electoral College. I use this with my classes when teaching the Electoral College. It has a great way of explaining the process and why the Electoral College evolved the way it did.

About as clear an explanation as I have ever found. Thanks for sharing.

This is a youtube clip of James Earl Jones reading an excerpt of Frederick Douglass's "4th of July Speech" -- As referenced in Week 2's Discussion Thread. For a long time I used this excerpt, because I didn't know about the David Blight podcast. I still think that this version is one of the most dramatic -- after all -- it is James Earl Jones.

Very powerful. I agree, this is great for high school classrooms.

Here is a link to the video of the School House Rock Preamble song. In fifth grade, I had to memorize the preamble and this was really helpful. Even those these videos are old and a little cheesy, I've found elementary students love them.

One of the classics! Old, cheesy, but effective!

This games has students play each of the branches of government in order to create laws, support and defend them. It's simplified enough for young students (upper elementary and middle school) and very engaging. It takes about 30 minutes to play the whole game, but I was able to get quite a bit out of it in just 10 minutes. It helps to clarify the roles of each of the branches of government and how they work together.

Annenberg materials are always reliable and both the games are certainly usable for upper elementary students.