Constitution+Day+Newspaper

**2009 Constitution Day Newspaper**
Some ideas for using this year's paper in your classes, arranged according to the sections in the paper. Please feel free to click the edit button and add your own ideas!

**About Rights and Rules**
 * The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. We often think about laws as rules with punitive consequences, but the Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights, is also about protecting the rights of individuals. It would be good to discuss how laws are both punitive and protective and how laws are supposed to be derived from the principles of the Constitution.

**Your Country: The United States of America**
 * Secondary extension: The first part of Thomas Paine's Common Sense does an excellent job, I think, of suggesting how and why governments form and why they are necessary as society grows. This might be a better text for this point than the article for secondary classrooms.
 * List and discuss the services that governments provide, perhaps distinguishing by level of government. Discuss and vote on a priority for them. Discuss the value of them and how the money to fund those services is, or should be collected.

**How America Began**
 * Perhaps a look at an alternative point of view would be appropriate, perhaps not. http://americanrevolution.org/loyalist.html has some pages about the American Revolution from the loyalist point of view.

**Fighting Words**
 * The structure of the Declaration of Independence would be a valuable thing to look at! It sets up the criteria for a just revolution, then presents a (long) list of justifications against England and the king, then a quick resolution. Is that a valid form for a persuasive essay, or for a call to action?

**The Constitution**
 * There are two distinct battlelines drawn in the article that deserve more detail, depending on your grade level. One is the issue of small states vs. large states. The other is northern states vs. southern states. You could discuss the various compromises that were made (throwing the slavery question out in order to move on, two houses and how they are selected, popular election of representation, checks and balances between the houses of Congress, etc.)

**Three Branches of Government / Checks and Balances**
 * I think it is important to discuss how powerful the President (and by extension the executive branch) should be. What are the pros and cons of a strong executive? There would likely be different opinions in 1780 as opposed to now, and an even deeper discussion if you got into the Federalist vs. Republican view at that time.
 * Have the students draw the checks and balances and discuss why it is important that these checks exist. Make sure the boys keep their diagrams for their Citizenship in the Nation merit badge.

**Great Men, Great Ideas**
 * Discuss the unique role that Washington and Franklin played in the Constitutional Convention to resolve differences and keep the work on task. Franklin's parting quotes are particularly powerful regarding how good the resulting document (government) was.
 * Gouverneur Morris gives one of my favorite speeches on what makes a nation great. It isn't long, but very powerful. The slightly abbridged version is avaialble[| online here].

**The Preamble**

**Personal Rights**
 * Most of this page deals with the issue that was not handled by the Constitution. I believe that including the slavery question would have prevented the compromises necessary to have the Constitution adopted. What elements of the Constitution address the slavery question indirectly?
 * Discuss the Bill of Rights and rank them in order of importance for the students today. Though each seems critical, some items have remained more important than others after 200 years. Have the students justify one or two that is either the most important, or one or two to be done away with as the least important.

**The Rest of the Amendments**
 * Timetoast.com is an easy to use online timeline creator. You could have the students create a timeline for the amendments, giving a heading, date, and a brief (sentence or two) description. To extend that, you could have them add events in history that may have directly led to each amendment.

**Understanding the Constitution**
 * There is a great website that breaks down each section of the US Constitution into today's language, Shmoop.com at []
 * I plan to use it for students to gain a better grasp of what the meaning of this document is and how it applies to them today. The language is difficult at best for some students to decipher and this website helps to clarify it for them. I plan to assign articles and amendments to students and have them dissect it and put it in "teen language" or have them draw a picture of what they think it means.