Special Constitution Day Issue
This special issue of Faculty Focus contains some resources and learning activities to help you plan what
you will do in your classroom to teach about the U.S. Constitution sometime during the first week of
school this fall quarter. The U.S. Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787 and that day is now
“Constitution Day and Citizenship Day.” Congress has passed legislation that requires all educational
institutions receiving federal funding to hold an educational program pertaining to the United States
Constitution on September 17th each year, or the week before or after if the 17th falls on a weekend.
For more information on this regulation see
Make a Class Constitution
Here’s a model lesson plan to develop a class constitution based on the U. S. Constitution. This is an interesting
way to establish your classroom management expectations.
Is it Constitutional?
This lesson plan contains a 10 item quiz that will make for on interesting discussion on what is or is not constitutional.
Go right to the Source
You can see a copy of the U.S. Constitution and other historically important documents on this Library of Congress
repository for Constitutional documents and information.
http://www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/bdsds/bdsdhome.html. Another copy of the U.S. Constitution has been
scanned and made available through the National Archives.
If you want to get your students used to looking for items on the web, you could use this webquest on the constitution.http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/marston/constitution/ Another webquest would lead them to
propose a new amendment to the constitutionhttp://ccollege.hccs.cc.tx.us/instru/govecon/amend.htm This
webquest on the Bill of Rights leads students to debate issues related to those first 10 Constitutional Amendments.
Constitution Web Quest: http://www.lesd.k12.az.us/PV/specials/media/conindex.html
Additional web resources for activities:
The U.S. Constitution Resource Center bills itself as a one-stop shop for activities related to the constitution.
storehouse of activities, information and translations of the US Constitution in other languages. You can check an interactive timeline of American History, featuring the constitution on the site: http://www.constitutioncenter.org/timeline/
The National Archives also has some lesson ideas http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/constitution-day/
Just for Fun
Fun quiz: You Decide - http://www.proteacher.com/cgi-bin/outsidesite.cgi?id=11-008&external=http://esd.iu5.org/LessonPlans/ConstitutionEL/youdecide.htm&-original=http://www.proteacher.com/090037.shtml&title=You%20Decide
Use the template on this website to print bookmarks for your students. http://www.teach-nology.com/worksheets/soc_studies/constit/book/
Use a discussion of the “missing amendment” as a basis for talking about information literacy and how
misinformation spreads. http://www.thirdamendment.com/missing.html
Write an acrostic poem about the Constitution using each of the letters of Constitution as the first letter of
one of the lines of the poem. http://www.teach-nology.com/worksheets/soc_studies/constit/poem/
Play Power Grab. Divide the class into teams, each of which has a copy of the constitution. This fast
moving game will help students learn how to skim documents for important facts. http://www.eduref.org/cgi-bin/printlessons.cgi/Virtual/Lessons/Social_Studies/US_Gover-nment/GOV0045.html
Please let us know if you use any of these suggestions or have developed or discovered others, so we can develop a resource to use to commemorate future Constitution Days.
Quotable: “The constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it
yourself.” --Ben Franklin
For more information regarding the articles in the Faculty Focus or to give input or suggestions of things you would
like to see incorporated into this newsletter please contact the Office of Instructional Improvement
The mission of the Office of Instructional Improvement is to advance educational strategies, seek to improve the
quality of learning environments, and support RTC staff as they prepare a diverse student population for work.