Welcome to the AK-CSS Members Forum! Please sign up to join the discussions.

This is the class ning page for the Breathing Life into the Constitution for your Classroom class at the ASDSA 2012

31 Members
Join Us!

You need to be a member of Alaska Council for the Social Studies to add comments!

Join Alaska Council for the Social Studies

Comments are closed.

Comments

  • Here's a set of bookmarks I've been collecting for our class.  Pretty much everything we've been talking about, all located in one place.  Please feel free to share...

    Constitutional Inquiry in the Classroom

  • Hi!  Valerie Spencer, Eagle River High School.  I just completed my first year of teaching and I am happy to still have my dream job in the fall.  I will be teaching World Honors, U.S. History, AK Studies, and Econ.  I have not yet taught the Constitution, although my undergrad degree is in U.S. History, and the time frame encompassing the Constitutional moment is one of my favorite.  I love the stories History tells and I find the persons associated with this document fascinating, brilliant, and personable in their flaws.  I hope to integrate elements of the course in all of my classes, especially in U.S. History.  I hope to generate more interest in the Constitution and help make it more relevant in the lives of my students.

  • My name is Mary Ray and I am currently a K teacher at Sand Lake Elementary school.  My principal asked me if I wanted to teach fifth grade and that is what spurred me wanting to take this course.  I also think that my understanding of the Constitution is weak and I want to gain more knowledge.

  • Hello, my name is Bret Clark and I am a teacher a Central Middle School of Science. I presently teach 8th grade U.S. History and SBP classes. I do a lot with the Constitution, students have to do a close read of the document, students do several essays on what different amendments mean and why they were important to the writers. This last year my classes used the Icivics program extensively. Because of our participation in the Icivics program and a little luck I will be having Sandra Day O'Connor in my class on Sept. 5th 2012. Way cool but a little scary too. I am hoping that this class will help me focus my lessons and just generally improve my teaching of the Constitution.

  • Hi my name is Derek Brewer and I am a teacher at A. J. Dimond High School.  I currently teach US History, Alaska Studies and Psychology.  I feel it is remiss to teach US History if students are not anchored with a basic understanding of our constitution and how it works.  With that said, I have found that some students are not as excited about the Constitution as I am.  I am looking for additional ways to get the big ideas across to students without the conversation digressing into political dogma.

  • Hello,

    I teach US History at Bartlett HS. I use the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in my class as primary documents - our focus is why did the Framers choose to put into the Constituion & Bill of Rights what is there - so we definitely are trying to use a historical perspective in our study! This year for the first time in 10 years I will also be teaching US Government so I am looking forward  to not just the historical perspective, but the modern living document. 

  • Hello,  I taught 2/3 grade for the last 5 years but will be moving up to 5th grade next year.  I teach at Scenic Park Elementary in Anchorage.  My teaching of the Constitution was limited to reading parts of the text and talking with my students about why they thought this document was important to our country.  We would create our own class Constitution as a way to guide the behaviors we wish to see in our class.  This was a beginning of the year activity.  Since I am going to 5th grade I feel I need a stronger base in this area and more ideas on how to teach this topic to older students.

  • Hi folks, I am a K-6 librarian at College Gate Elementary in Anchorage where I teach library/media skills.  I don't actually teach about the Constitution but I support the work of my colleagues who do teach about it in pretty traditional ways. Frankly, we need some new ideas because I find the idea of memorizing the  preamble and the amendments chilling. I know this is going to be a great class.   Cheers. 

  • Hi,
    I am Judy Morookian, I teach sixth grade at Grace Christian in Anchorage. I am the language arts and social studies half of our team. I spend less time on the Constitution than I would like as our scope for sixth grade is western hemisphere. My students really enjoy learning about a document that is so relative to their everyday life. We spend the bulk of our time on the development of our current system of government and the bill of rights as these are more understandable for sixth graders. I am excited to gain ideas for making this more alive for my students!
  • I am Segue Grant and I live and teach in Oscarville, AK.  Oscarville is a very small village near Bethel.  We have roughly 70 community members and of those 27 are students K12.  I am the high school teacher and, therefore, I teach all subjects 9-12. We rotate our history courses every year.   Because I am a secondary generalist and have the same students year after year I can reinforce what we have previously discussed by introducing new material which often happens with current events. I believe in cross curriculum teaching as much as possible.  Last semester my students did a writing project about the Bill of Rights in writing class while tying it into our history class simultaneously. 

This reply was deleted.