How to Teach the Bill of Rights

Download or read book How to Teach the Bill of Rights written by John J. Patrick and published by Anti Defamation League of Bnai. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Directed to secondary school teachers of history, government, and civics, this book is designed to fit common educational objectives in secondary school curriculum guides that call for teaching and learning about the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. The volume is intended to encourage careful reading, analysis, and classroom discussion of primary documents and legal case studies on Bill of Rights issue in U.S. history and contemporary society. The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the contents and meaning of the Federal Bill of Rights and provide a rationale and guidelines for teaching about constitutional rights and liberties. Chapters 3-6 include background knowledge and insights about the making of the Bill of Rights, key civic values in the Bill of Rights, the role of the Supreme Court in protecting constitutional rights, and Bill of Rights issues in five landmark cases of the Supreme Court. Teachers should draw upon the chapters of this volume to develop lesson plans and learning activities for their secondary school courses in history, civics, and government. Teachers will be able to use the substance of chapters 3-6 in their implementations of 12 lesson plans included in these chapters. Chapter 7 of this volume is a guide to resources for teachers on the Bill of Rights. It includes a select annotated bibliography of various kinds of teaching and learning materials including video programs, poster sets, case study books, mock trial simulations, and handbooks with various types of lesson plans and teaching strategies. The appendices in this volume include the complete text of the U.S. Constitution and an annotated table and index of Supreme Court cases mentioned or discussed in chapters 1-7. (DB)