What's the best way to make sense of the Constitution?  A helpful lesson contains both the text of Article III and annotation of each of its sections, breaking it down into easy-to-understand parts. It also includes links to a...

A courtroom can be a scary place for the uninitiated. Get familiar with the process using a helpful overview of the activities that take place prior to both civil and criminal cases.  The lesson explains the differences between...

Americans love to learn about their rights, especially those that protect them from the government's power to invade their privacy. Young people are especially engaged by this topic. An informative lesson explores four Supreme Court...

Why study landmark Supreme court cases? A helpful lesson offers a brief but valuable argument for the importance of these cases in the field of criminology. It introduces scholars to some key terms necessary for studying court cases and...

Courtrooms are complicated. In addition to the many rules, there are a number of people whose jobs are not very clear to the casual courtroom observer. With the resource, individuals identify some of these roles and review more...

Students take a field trip to a wetland ecosystem. An informal pond study is performed by students. They examine their favorite animal, write a description of how it moves and illustrate it. In groups, students draw pictures of organisms...

There's more to soccer than just playing the game. Here, the class is introduced to the duties of the: owner, manager, coach, captain, statistician, publicist, and referee. Each of these roles have specific duties in order for a team to...

Students examine the early years of Harry Truman to determine how his upbringing influenced his character. His political career from county judge to president is explored and some of the decisions made as a politician, evaluated.

Students consider the demands of the judicial process and work in small groups to write editorials in response to the one that is read in class. For homework, they grade a television judge and write reflective essays.

Students participate in a panel discussion to decide who was responsible for each development on the island. In this Lord of the Flies instructional activity, students divide into groups supporting Jack and Ralph with a third group...

Learners identify the qualities that contribute to effective verbal and non-verbal communication. They use those qualities as criteria by which to judge an in-class political debate on education.

Young scholars study about President Bush's nomination of federal appeals court judge John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court. They compare coverage of the nomination in different sections and articles in The New York Times.

Students are introduced to the three functions of government (legislative, judicial, and executive). They read and discuss a story about an overworked king who must handle all the tasks of government. Students give a description of the...

Young scholars role play a court with lawyers, a judge, jury, and more. In this classroom court lesson plan, students review rules of the law in the judicial system.

Students view examples of images and discuss why a director or writer chose these images. Using different forms of media, they develop their own standards by which to judge television or films. They discover the use of visual literacy...

Students assume identities of lawmakers, judges, writers, and protestors during times in American history when freedoms of speech and press were limited because country was on the brink of war or fighting one. Students use primary source...

Learners investigate their rights and responsibilities as juveniles in the Missouri legal system. After taking a poll on juvenile justice, they discuss their responses and suggest changes which they could send to the state legislature. ...

Students study operations with real numbers using mental computation or paper-and-pencil calculations. They judge the reasonableness of numerical computations and their results. They set up and solve proportions for direct and inverse...

Students rewrite a traditional fairy tale to represent the viewpoint of the villain. They participate in a mock trial of that villain in which all regular court participants (judge, jury, defendant, witnesses, plaintiff, etc) play roles.

Students come up with counterarguments to the 1917 pamphlet, "The Case Against Woman Suffrage." They compare the position of women in 1917 with women today, and judge how suffrage has impacted women's lives. They write a personal...

Young scholars examine how Presidents are judged during their time in office as well as afterwards. They conduct and Internet search for Jimmy Carter's inaugural address and write a news story about his address. Once they have written an...

Students complete activities to learn how to develop story ideas in journalistic writing. In this story ideas lesson, students learn news value judging criteria, identify language to ask beat sources for story ideas, distinguish story...

Young scholars exemplify non-stereotypical behavior. For this character education lesson, students read Pink and Say and discuss the negative effects of judging people on superficial characteristics. Young scholars fill in a chart how...

Seventh graders discuss the origin of discrimination and the Holocaust. In this Bible lesson, 7th graders define discrimination and discuss if they have discriminated or not. They thank God for forgiveness and realize it is no ones role...