Information for Marshall-Brennan Seminar Students
Lesson Plans In the Classroom Assessment Tools and Strategies
Background
Classroom Management
Planning
Elements
 Strategies and Materials
Rubrics
Links about 
Constitutional Law
 Study Skills
Lesson Plans:
Careful planning is key to successful lessons in the classroom.  Each time you step into the classroom, you should have a clear plan for the day’s lesson.  You should also have a sense of how any individual lesson fits into a particular unit as well as how lessons and units relate to your goals for the entire class.

I.  Decide what it is you’re going to teach.  This seems simple, but it can be very complex:  what do you want students to know or be able to do after the lesson is over?  just facts?  skills?  which ones/  why? do you want them to reach conclusions?  analyze or explain something?

II.  Determine how long you have.  (If you’re thinking in terms of individual lessons, think in terms of actual class periods.  Ideally--each lesson will be self-contained and able to be completed within one class period.  You can spend several days on the same topic, but it’s better to have discreet lessons each day that have a beginning, a middle, and, especially, an end.)

III.   Decide how you will know and how the students will show that they have “gotten it.”

A. what will they know?
B. what will they do to demonstrate their understanding of the big idea or the various pieces of it?
C.  how will you know that they know what they know?
IV.   Determine what the student will do to:
A.  acquire specific information
B.  think critically about that information
C.  connect that information with previous knowledge and experience
D.  demonstrate their informed point of view
V.  What do you have to do to make this happen?  The answer to that question is the key to your lesson plan.
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VI.  Lesson plans should have each of the following elements:
    A. Objectives
    B. Materials (include samples of handouts if possible)
    C. Procedures (the order of events)
    D. Activities (what will students do, both in class and for homework?)
    E. Assessments (with rubrics if you so choose)
    F. You might also wish to include any or all of the following (these are more for your own use or for the use of others who will be using your lesson plan):
      1. Discussion questions
      2. Vocabulary words
      3. Suggested readings
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VII.  Links -- the following sites have multiple lesson plans and other resources related to Constitutional Law topics
    A.  The Educator's Reference Desk -- "How to Develop a Lesson Plan"

    B.  The Educator's Reference Desk -- Social Studies Lesson Plans, see especially Civics, Current Events, and U.S. Government

    C.  Discovery Channel Lesson Plans Library -- many of the lesson plans in the history section may be useful, especially if you're trying to provide historical context for some of the cases.

    D.  The New York Times Learning Network Lesson Plan Archive, especially sections for Civics and Current Events, as well as American History and Social Studies.

    E.  The Justice Learning web site includes lesson plans and other information related to multiple issues, stemming from the Justice Talking program on NPR.

    F.  The resources for educators section of the National Constitution Center web site contains some lesson plans and links to documents as well information about planning a field trip.

    G.  The Bill of Rights Institutes's site includes a small selection of elessons and offers the opportunity to subscribe to relevant newsletters.

    H.  Justice for Kids and Youth, a site offered by the US Department of Justice, has some information that might be useful, especially for background of civil rights matters.

    I.  Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, offers a lengthy selection of classroom activities.

    J.  The New Jersey State Bar Foundation's site includes the Student's Corner, which has information about some of the topics you might cover as well as a link to the Legal Eagle, a newsletter for students.

    K.  The Pennsylvania Bar Association's site has a section on K-12 Law-Related Education, which in turn includes a link to a lesson plan about the constitutionality of the pledge of allegiance.

    L.  Landmark Supreme Court Cases contains a plethora of resources about some key court cases (including Tinker, T.L.O., Kuhlmeier, and Brown), including summaries at three different reading levels and related activities.

    M.  The web site for Street Law is most explicitly geared to the textbook of the same name, but also has summaries of cases and useful definitions of many terms.  Click on "Cases and Resources," then on Unit Six, which deals most explicitly with constitutional rights.

    N.  The First Amendment Center's site has information about the five rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, with considerable information on topics related to schools.  In addition, the site offers lesson plans, several of which have to do with students rights and related issues.

    O.  The Cybernewseum, on  the web site of the Newseum, has a number of galleries of editorial cartoons.  The Newseum's site, interesting in its own regard, has the daily front pages of newspapers from around the world.

    P.  The web site of the Supreme Court of the United States offers information about court procedures, opinions, schedules of upcoming sessions, and information about visiting the Court.

    Q.  The American Bar Association has a section of its web page devoted to teachers and students.  Some helpful material can be found at Student Central; the site also features some lesson plans.

    R.  The Washington Post's Supreme Court section has case summaries and articles related to the Court's decisions and cases currently under review.

    S.  Links from the U.S. Department of Education to sites related to civics, the U.S. government, and criminology.

    T.  The Teachable Moments website has lessons plans, materials, and other information related to incorporating current events into the classroom.

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In the Classroom -- the links listed below offer suggestions about classroom management, discipline, and teaching methods that may prove useful for you.

I.  Classroom Management

II.  Teaching Strategies and Materials
A.  Discovery Channel site for teachers, with some useful teaching tools, including Puzzlemaker

B.  Pearson Prentice Hall site for Classroom Teaching and Learning Strategies

C.  Houghton Mifflin site for Graphic Organizers

D.  Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators – see especially history and social studies section, which is more focused on history than civics, but does have some useful sites

E.  The New York Times Learning Network -- great resource for news summaries, current events topics, and a special section on Brown v. Board of Education

F.  The New York Times also hosts a site about civic engagement that features some interesting, thought-provoking articles and useful links.

III. Study Skills

A.  The Rutgers-Camden Learning Resource Center has multiple worksheets to develop various writing and study skills.  They can be downloaded from the site--look for the link to the choices on the home page.

B.  Maryville High Schools Study Skills Help web site.

C.  Study guides and strategies from the University of St. Thomas.

D.  Study skills guides from Kelso High School in Scotland.

E.  A study skills booklet from Indiana's Learn More Resource Center.

F.  Resources from How-to-Study.com.

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Assessment Tools and Strategies:
    I.  Assessment is a vital part of good teaching.  It allows you to know what students know.  Good assessment tools recognize that assignments and activities have many facets and enable you to evaluate those multiple aspects in a coherent manner.  In addition, you may (and should) use a variety of tools to assess what your students have learned.
    II.  Remember the key question:
        How will you know that they know what you want them to know?
    III.  In order to assess your students effectively, you must first decide what it is you want them to know;  this is one of the earliest steps in preparing your lesson plan.  Then, you must decide what your students will do to demonstrate they they have acquired the knowledge and information they should have garnered from class activities.  The methods you choose to assess your students should be varied and creative.
    IV.  One effective means of assessment is to use a rubric.  Rubrics indicate precisely what will be evaluated and how different levels of success will be differentiated.  Listed below are several web sites that have examples of rubrics, which can be adapted for your own use.  The following pages have multiple examples from those sites, which have been selected as examples of the types of activities and assessments you might consider using in your classroom.
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Information about Camden -- here are some links to sites that have information about our host city:

Demographic characteristics -- 2000 census

History of the city

Camden entry in Wikipedia

Invincible City:  Camden, NJ

50 Years of Community Building in Camden

CAMConnect

Click here to suggest additional sites.