Constitution 101 is a free, in-depth, one-semester course on the Constitution for high school students. Rather than advocating points of view, it continually presents contrasting opinions for students to consider.
It consists of 15 online modules with videos, reading material, activities, and other online resources. The course is best for a group class since it calls for frequent class discussions, but it can also work with a parent directing independent study and having discussions with students.
There are two ways to use the course. You can download the extensive PDF manual for both teacher and student (one module at a time) and work from it, although I found that many of its links didn’t work. The preferred alternative is to follow the online lesson plans, clicking on either “student instructions” or “teacher notes,” depending on who is using it. Since the online lesson plans work best, that is the option I will describe.
All modules except the final one have either five or six parts and a test. The final module has four parts. Each part is intended to take one class session and is laid out stating the purpose and the process. The process part walks students through the activities which might include watching one or more videos, answering questions related to videos, becoming familiar with vocabulary words and terms, reading primary sources or other information, completing a graphic organizer, or preparing for a discussion.
At the end of each module, students take a 20-question multiple-choice test, which can also be printed out if you prefer that format. The answer key is included for the teacher. Some lessons include an extension activity after the test.
A description of the fifth module on the Bill of Rights should help. The first lesson, titled “Dissenters at the Constitutional Convention,” begins with a paragraph explaining that there was significant dissent, particularly by three individuals, George Mason, Elbridge Gerry, and Edmund Randolph. Students view images of statues of them that were created to reflect their attitudes at the Constitutional Convention and discuss the body language represented. They read short biographies about each of them. Finally, they read an excerpt from Benjamin Franklin’s “Closing Speech at the Constitutional Convention” where he pleaded for support for the Constitution despite its flaws. (For those teaching group classes, the documents, biographies, and other readings can be shared through Google Classroom.)
The second lesson is specifically about the Bill of Rights. Students watch a 16:38-minute video lecture by Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center, in which he discusses some of the people involved in drafting the Constitution and Bill of Rights, sources that influenced their thinking, and details of the Bill of Rights. Illustrations and photos support his lecture. Students then answer five questions on a two-page graphic organizer. This page, and others like it, can be printed as either an editable Word doc or a PDF.
The third lesson digs into the origin of the Bill of Rights, particularly comparing the Virginia Declaration of Rights to the Bill of Rights. Students read a summary of pertinent points made by the Anti-Federalists and then complete a graphic organizer identifying several similarities and differences between the two documents using excerpts from both documents that are included with the graphic organizer.
The fourth lesson presents other arguments for and against the inclusion of the Bill of Rights by having students read from three primary sources (transcript of speeches and correspondence). There’s quite a bit of reading for this lesson.
For the fifth lesson, students use a graphic organizer to summarize the “big idea” behind each amendment in the Bill of Rights. When presented as a classroom activity, students each summarize just one amendment and create a collage of images representing the big idea to share with the class. Homeschoolers can adapt this activity however they wish.
The sixth lesson delves into how the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court decisions ensured that the Bill of Rights applies to individual states as well as the national government. Students are provided with three essays with graphic organizers for notetaking plus a lengthier article that ties everything together.
A test follows the sixth lesson. Some modules have several videos, while this module relies more on reading material. Other modules include links to additional material and videos on the National Constitution Center’s website. The material covered extends beyond the content of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to include some context. For example, the learning objectives for the third module, “Road to the Convention,” are:
1. Explore Shays’ Rebellion and its influence on the Founding generation.
2. Describe the Articles of Confederation and determine what type of national government it established.
3. Discuss what the Founding generation learned from key state constitutions.
4. Explain why the Founding generation decided to write a new constitution.
5. Examine the key lessons in Federalist Nos. 10 and 55.
This is an academically demanding course that makes excellent use of primary sources, which means students have a lot of reading material. They also do quite a bit of writing as they complete graphic organizers and answer questions about what they have read or watched. If you were to download the manual for individual modules rather than follow the online lesson plans, you would see that each module has a lot of material—25 to 95 pages per module, although maybe one-fourth or one-third of that is material for the teacher. Even so, those using this as their primary resource for a high school government course might want to add their own coverage of state and local government.
The National Constitution Center’s Constitution 101 course should work for those of all political persuasions except those few who believe we should ignore the Constitution as an outdated document. It does a great job of introducing students to the thinking of our Founding Fathers and the rationale behind the document.
Khan Academy’s Constitution 101
Khan Academy has partnered with the National Constitution Center to create another Constitution 101 course that follows a similar (but not identical) outline. The Khan Academy course uses many of the videos and readings from the National Constitution Center course but not the graphic organizers. It adds short videos by many different speakers such as Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU, Clark Neily of the Cato Institute, and representatives of the National Constitution Center—a wide variety of speakers from different viewpoints. The course also adds many short quizzes that are typical of Khan Academy courses. This version of the course lacks the writing component in the National Constitution Center’s course, and consequently, students might do little of their own analysis of conflicting viewpoints.
