Rewriting the Constitution: A Classroom Unit for 11th and 12th Grade Comparative Government

Understanding the importance of the United States Constitution is not an easy task for students in secondary level government courses. Mired in the legal language of the 18th century, the document presents numerous challenges for students who might very well be justified in shrugging their shoulders and rolling their eyes when asked to connect the foundations of governance in the United States to their lives. The multi-week unit, though, attempts to leverage expertise building, critical engagement, dialogic discursive instruction, and individualized reflection to facilitate deep engagement with Constitutional reform. 

For those wanting to jump straight to the student centered unit assignment sheet, click here. 

The unit is divided into three sections with an essay based summative assessment. Each section utilizes Harkness Discussions to provide students with extensive opportunities to deepen their understanding of the Constitution and Constitutional reform. Key assignments within the unit include guided reading notes, Harkness Discussions, Collaborative Constitution Rubric, and the Reconciled Constitution Rubric. The summative assessment challenges students to demonstrate comprehension of the materials by responding to the following prompt, which is also the essential question for the unit: How can the Constitution of the United States be evaluated and, if necessary, changed to create a more perfect union? 

The unit includes four Harkness Discussions, a form of dialogic instruction (Fisher, Frey, and Law, 2021, p. 159). For each Harkness Discussion students will be assigned academic readings to contextualize the Constitution or various Constitutional reform initiatives. For each reading, students will be required to complete Cornell Notes utilizing instructor provided guiding questions. The Harkness Discussion is a procedural learning method through which students are provided with sources with which to answer questions through academic conversations. Utilizing an IPad, the instructor can track student performance using EquityMaps, an application that tracks individual student talking time, as well as a variety of customizable attributes. For the purpose of Comparative Government, the developer created Common Core, 9-12, “checknotes” are recommended. These include the following: presents perspectives clearly, concisely, and logically; incorporates others into the discussion; responds directly to questions posed; refers to evidence from texts or research; clarifies or verifies ideas/conclusions; poses effective questions; makes new connections in light of new information; challenges/evaluates ideas or conclusions effectively; summarizes points of agreement or disagreement; responds off topic or is disruptive. 

 Students are provided with a table adapted from Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford’s Academic Conversations that provides academic skills paired with possible conversational tools (2011, p. 77). Most importantly, the instructor only minimally intervenes in the discussion and instead focuses upon tracking and creating data matrixes upon which the students can later reflect. The opening question of the Harkness Discussions is a constructed response comparison that will enable a variety of students at different skill levels to engage with the declarative knowledge and procedural skills (Marzan Research, 2016e, p. 8). The discussion should be paused after twenty minutes to allow students to stretch and moving around. At the end of the five-minute break, students should be shown how the conversation is progressing using the EquityMaps application. The latter can be readily broadcast to the classroom’s projector system or the IPad can be passed around the room. After a further twenty minutes, the discussion is concluded and the EquityMaps application will, at the instructor’s request, email all of the students their individual contribution to the discussion. As a one-to-one technology school, students during the Harkness Discussion can also utilize the Google-chat feature with the instructor when uncomfortable with speaking to the entire group as an alternative means of sharing their thoughts, pieces of evidence, and questions (CAST, 2018). 

 To solidify student learning as recommended by John C. Bean’s Engaging Ideas, students conclude the Harkness Discussion with a Written Reflection. The Written Reflection is a paragraph length response to three questions (2011, pp. 202-210). The first question, building upon Marzano’s idea of the student-centered lesson, is personal: How did I contribute to the discussion? (Marzano Research, 2016c, pp. 5, 10). The second question tasks the student with reflecting upon the group as a whole: How did the group perform in having an academic conversation? Finally, the students are asked an analytical, content specific question. Several examples are included as Reflections within the unit sheet. The latter also serves as a priming exercise for the summative unit writing task. Students complete these reflections in their course notebook in OneNote (CAST, 2018). This allows both the students and the instructor to easily track writing development over the course of the year and to provide feedback on low stake writing assignments before formative and summative assessments that carry greater weight. The repetitive frequency of the Harkness Discussion reflection entries and their parallel nature aligns with Marzano’s methodologies for deepening learning (Marzano Research, 2016d, p. 10). 

A student-centered unit sheet is available here. Much of what is presented in the sheet would be disseminated to students as discrete assignments through the school’s electronic information management system powered by Blackbaud. 

References 

Bean, John C. 2011. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. 2nd Edition. 

Cappiello, M., & Dawes, E. T. (2014). Text Complexity and Text Sets. Huntington Beach, CA: Shell Education. CAST. (2018, January 16). 

UDL Guidelines. Retrieved August 29, 2020, from http://udlguidelines.cast.org/action-expression/expression-communication/fluencies-practice-performance 

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Law, N. V. (2021). Comprehension: The skill, will, and thrill of reading. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. 

Hassan, Thomas E. 2015. A Classroom Revolutions: Reflections on Harkness Learning and Teaching. 

Marzano Research. 2016a. Demonstrating Intensity and Enthusiasm. 

Marzano Research. 2016b. Presenting Unusual Information. 

Marzano Research. 2016c. Providing Opportunities for Students to Talk About Themselves. 

Marzano Research. 2016d. Practicing and Deepening Lessons: Structured Practice Sessions. 

Marzano Research. 2016e. Practicing and Deepening Lessons: Examining Similarities and Differences. 

Marzano, Robert J., et. al. 1997. Dimensions of Learning. 

Zwiers, J. (2014). Building academic language: Meeting common core standards across disciplines, grades 5-12. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 

Zwiers, J., & Crawford, M. (2011). Academic Conversations: Classroom talk that fosters critical thinking and content understanding. Portland Maine: Stenthouse Publishers.