Seinfeld: Kennedy Conspiracy Spoof

Thanks to Kimberly for the suggestion.  This is a classic spoof from Seinfeld that looks at the "magic bullet" conspiracy after the Kennedy assassination. This clip is appropriate for any high school class.

"This Will Revolutionize Education"

Colbert Report: Interview with President Obama

This interview covers the low voter turnout in the midterm election and the debate about the Keystone Pipeline.  It is also a good look into the inner workings of partisan politics. The interview is appropriate for most classrooms.

The Colbert Report
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Fantasy Geopolitics

Getting students engaged with current events can be tricky, but this game Fantasy Geopolitics is a great tool to get them excited about reading the news.  I used this site with 8th graders last year, and current event Fridays became a class favorite.   This game works a lot like a fantasy football team, but instead of creating a team of players, students create a team of countries.  The more their countries appear in the news, the more points their team receives.

Fantasy Geopolitics works well with teams or with individuals, and it encourages students to follow the news so they can make smart trades each week.  This game teaches students to pay attention to international events so that they can make educated predictions about where news will spread.

Jimmy Fallon and the Gadsden Purchase

This clip is a good brain break about several US territorial treaties.  A good one to watch after studying the concepts.

 

Why Privacy Matters

Interesting Ted Talk to facilitate a discussion on privacy in the 21st century.  This subject has plenty of connections to the 4th amendment.

Horrible Histories

There are tons of these video clips on YouTube about a wide range of history topics.  Some are free, while others require payment to BBC.  Here is an example I used with a middle school class a few years ago.

The Onion: Jesse Owens and Civil Rights Satire

This Onion report draws attention to the fact that while Jesse Owens was a hero abroad he would have been unable to eat in many restaurants in the US.  First half about Jesse Owens is clean, second half about Nelson Mandela uses the word "defecate."  Just know your audience.
Construction Workers Realize They Put Erie Canal In Wrong Place

Incarceration Nation

This video clip from the Sunday Morning show is great for getting government students to think about the effectiveness of prison as a punishment, as well as the racial disparities in our prison population.

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-incarceration-nation/

Daily Show: Gerrymandering

This clip is a satire on racial gerrymandering.  Start at 40 seconds to avoid language.

The Daily Show
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Daily Show: 2016 Election

This video clip looks at "Presidential Dynasties" and would be great to start a discussion about the American process for choosing presidential candidates. This clip is appropriate for any government class.

The Daily Show
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Daily Show: Civil Liberties Debate

This interview with Andrew Napolitano touches on the debate between safety and civil liberties. Content is appropriate for any class.

The Daily Show
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Daily Show: Public Opinion

This is a great clip to show how unreliable polls can be.  It is a good review of leading questions, inaccurate sampling, and media bias.  NOTE: I would recommend stopping this clip 30 seconds before the end for language that is likely not appropriate for the classroom. 

Poll Bearers

The Daily Show
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AP Government: Demographics and Public Policy

We have started a unit on public opinion and political participation in my AP Government class.  The chapter begins with an examination of current demographic trends in the US.  Pew Research has some really cool interactive graphics on their website that ties in very well with the chapter.  I assigned pairs of students demographic topics and had them research the trend and make predictions about how it will impact politics in the future.  Students eventually presented their predictions, and they came up with some great answers.

This activity is a great way to introduce the many ways that demographics and public opinion shape politics.

These are the websites I had students use:

The Next America
Pew Research Center

This is a downloadable version of the graphic organizer I had them fill out for their initial research:

Graphic Organizer

Let me know how it goes!

Ukraine Crisis and Foreign Policy

We're studying the President's role in foreign policy and recently covered the different ways the US interacts with foreign countries.  We discussed the following:

• Militarily
• Foreign Aid
• Sanctions
• Embargos
• Advice
• Treaties

We also discussed the various reasons the US would want to engage in foreign policy.  Some of the reasons discussed were:

• Promote economic growth
• Foster democracy abroad
• Protect national security and interests
• Protect human rights

The crisis in Ukraine is a great current event to get students to try and apply this knowledge.  I created this simple activity to reinforce these concepts above.

Lesson

First we reviewed the crisis with these YouTube clips to get an understanding of the conflict:

Why Russia is invading Ukraine, explained in 2 minutes
Why are Russia and Ukraine Fighting?
How Powerful Is Russia?

Following the video clips I had students work in groups of 4 to discuss the possible actions the US could take to address the crisis.  I had groups use this discussion guide to help guide their group work:

Discussion Guide

Commander in Chief Lesson

Well this was a tough one.  The President's role as Commander in Chief is constantly changing and there is so much grey area with regards to his war powers.  I tried to go over just the basics and left some room for students to research and go into more depth if they choose.  Let me know what you think or if I should modify it.



Student Video Guide

Video Lessons

The school I work at is a 1:1 laptop school, so I have been experimenting with blended learning.  I have created a few video lessons for my government class so that students can work at their own pace.  My goal with these videos is not to create a content related video, but to create a shareable lesson.  There are tons of great content related videos out there from places like Ted Ed and Crash Course History, but the videos alone are a passive way to learn.  I've built activities around these content videos so that students are actively engaged with what they are watching.

Feel free to use these in your class or modify them to fit your needs.  The videos are just directions to the lessons.  The student work comes in with the lesson guide, which is attached to each video.

Powers of the President

 

Lesson Guide


The Electoral College


Lesson Guide


The Powers of Congress




Lesson Guide

The Lunchroom Fight: Historical Perspective

I came across this lesson on the Stanford History Education Group website and thought it was a great way to teach historical perspective and bias.  The lesson basically gets students to think about how history is constructed by considering the different accounts from witnesses of a lunchroom fight.

I modified the lesson a bit for my own purposes by actually writing out fictional transcripts for the fight from different student perspectives.  I like the activity because it gives students very concrete examples of bias and perspective.  Students can see how witness accounts can be unreliable and this leads to a great discussion about evaluating sources for credibility. The lesson works well at the start of the year to get students thinking about how difficult it truly is for historians to piece the past together.

Here are the resources I created for the lesson.  Feel free to use them or modify them.


Student Interviews

Student Observation Form

Events Puzzle

A key concept for middle school social studies is understanding the cause and effect relationships between events.  I created a small exercise for my students to practice this skill for our unit on slavery.  I call these exercises Events Puzzles, though I'm sure I am not the first to come up with this.  The idea behind the exercise is very simple.  I gave my students 10-12 cards, each with a description of a historical event or fact related to slavery in the United States.  The cards were in a random order, but they all connected to each other in some way.  Students worked in groups to create a mind map with connecting words and arrows for the events.

It was interesting to see the different connections each group made and no two groups were the same.  Some students created a very methodical chain of events with no two events having more then one connection, while others had complicated webs with multiple connections for each event.

Rather then correcting the students puzzles, I had students wander around the room analyzing other groups puzzles for ideas.  Once they had seen each puzzle and recorded observations and ideas, they went back to their puzzle and made adjustments.  We had a discussion afterwords about why there were so many different ideas and if there was one correct way to do it.  We decided in the end that although some connections were wrong, there were many ways to solve the events puzzle.  It all depended on the connecting words.

I like these kinds of activities, because they really facilitate collaboration and problem solving.  Students learned from each other during the exercise and got a chance to review events we had studied and saw how they were connected.  I would love to find a way to expand on these kinds of exercises.  I think this would work well with Smart Boards or tablets (if only we had them!).

Here are the events I had my students make connections with.  It isn't a perfect list and I would be happy to hear suggestions of events that could be changed or added.

Events Puzzle

An Alternative to PowerPoint and Posters...Please

I have been experimenting with infographics as an alternative presentation format to the usual suspects of PowerPoint, Prezi, and the classic poster.  Infographics are visual representations of information with the intention of presenting complex ideas in a simple and easy to understand format.   What really separates an infographic from a poster is the idea of simplicity in the presentation of the information.

My 8th grade classes have been studying slavery in the United States and I wanted an engaging way for them to research and present their understanding of living conditions for African American slaves during the 19th century.  I teach in Vietnam at an American international school with an almost exclusively Vietnamese student population.  Teaching American history can be a bit challenging because there is a lack of context and background knowledge.  I turned to infographics as a tool to both engage students with the topic and to get them thinking critically about how to best present their knowledge.  I was very pleased with the results of the project and the discussions that sprang from their research.

Here are a few of the final products.

  

This project was not only a great way for students to present their findings, but also an opportunity to touch on visual literacy skills.  We are living in the digital age and how we communicate ideas and information is constantly changing.  Students need to be equipped with knowledge about visual aesthetics and how it can effect how efficiently their ideas are communicated to an audience.  For this particular assignment I stressed to students the importance of color choice, contrast, font, alignment of objects, and style repetition.  I also had them look at a number of exemplar infographics to get an understanding of how they differed from a simple poster.

The program I used for the project was easel.ly.  It is a free program and simple to use.  The one limitation I found with the program was the small size of each template.  Many of my students found a way around this by creating multiple slides that they later joined together using photojoiner.net.