Friday, August 10, 2012

We the Peeps of the Classroom...

Day 1


Days 2/3


Day 4/5: Morning Meeting/Social Studies



Museum Walk

Our complete (and massive) constitution! 


  1. I'm a first year 5th grade teacher. Please help! Would you also teach about the actual Constitution as you do this unit? Do 5th graders know what the Constitution is yet and especially its importance to our country? I'm thinking a little prior history review would help? Any comments or suggestions would be a great help! Thanks!

    1. Hi! Sorry I didn't see this comment sooner! I actually teach about the Constitution while we are doing this unit. Students typically will know what the Constitution in, but they certainly don't know about all its parts. Usually they just know "it's the document that set up our government". They don't understand how it is different from the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, or the purpose of the preamble, etc. Tennessee's standards have us getting pretty in depth, so I'm not sure how far you'll need to go where you live. The students studied the Revolutionary War in 4th grade so I did some scaffolding through discussion of why we had that war, who we fought, and the outcome. I tried to lead them (without them knowing they're being led) to the conclusion that we never wanted to live under a monarchy again! This led to the conversations about setting up a government. Hopefully your students have a bit of prior knowledge to build on because it certainly helps!