Classroom Activities
What follows are lessons that serve to bring the unit to life. These lessons are a snapshot and do not take the teacher from the beginning to the end of the unit. The first lesson of the unit is included here. Teachers should format the class to the personal needs of the students and should feel free to add or subtract any step in the process. Other possible lesson ideas are addressed in the Strategies section of this unit.
Lesson One: Defining Democracy
The objective of this lesson is for students to come up with their own definition of "democracy" and to compare that definition with several historical and scholarly models of democracies in practice. This lesson serves as the introduction to the unit and will feature reciprocal teaching techniques as well as lecture. The lesson should last for about two 45-minute periods. The standards addressed in this lesson are 5.1C, 5.1E, 5.3A, 8.3B, 8.3C, 8.4B, and 8.4C.
Pre-class assignments are meant to activate prior knowledge in the students. The obvious pre-class question for the first day of this lesson asks students "what is a democracy?" Students will provide a variety of answers, at which time a working definition which the majority of the class may agree upon should be created. This definition will probably resemble the governmental structure of the US. The Greek definition of "democracy" along with the Athenian example should then be shared with the class. Because the wording is simple in nature, students should be asked what "power derived from the people" entails. A discussion will ensue; midway through the discussion, the definition of "republic" should be shared along with the Roman example of a Senate. With both democracy and republic defined, students should make arguments for which model best fits their agreed upon definition of democracy from the beginning of class. After a short informal debate, it should be revealed to students that America was founded on the principles of both democracy and republicanism. According to the students' definition and with the knowledge that America was intended to be a democratic-republic, students should be asked what elements a modern democratic nation should possess. The compilation of this list, whether as a whole class or in small groups, should go to the end of the period. Homework in preparation for tomorrow should be to have students give justification for why each element on the list helps foster democratic ideals.
Day two begins with a review of last night's homework. As students are sharing their justifications, each element of democracy from yesterday's discussion should be put up on one side of the board. After this is complete, Robert Dahl's 5 democratic criteria should be written on the other side of the board. Students should be asked to try to define Dahl's criteria and a more formal definition should be provided by the teacher. At this time, Dahl's 6 Institutional Requirements should also be shared. A good activity to help link the criteria to the requirements is to have all of the criteria written out on the board and have students match the requirements to each of the criteria. The requirements serve as good practical definitions for the criteria and give concrete examples of how democracies can carry out democratic aims. Please refer to Dahl's On Democracy or the report card in the appendix for information on how the criteria and requirements match up. The matching game is the closing activity of the second class period. Once Dahl's criteria have been outlined and defined, students should be ready to judge how well modern democracies fulfill their democratic goals in practice.
Lesson Two: Jigsaw on Government
The objective of this lesson is to introduce students to the varied reasons people choose to form governments and nations. By employing the jigsaw method, students will be asked to engage with primary sources and draw comparative conclusions over the four excerpts used. Ideally this lesson would last only one 45-minute period, but different levels of learners may require the jigsaw to stretch over two 45-minute periods. The standards addressed in this lesson are 5.1A, 5.1C, 5.1E, and 5.1H.
To start the lesson, students should be asked the focusing question of the jigsaw: "why do societies form governments?" Once sufficient discussion of responses has been completed and a list of possible answers compiled, the class will divide into four or eight small groups (preferably four students). These are the primary jigsaw groups. Each group will be given one of the four following excerpts to read: 1) A paraphrase of the opening paragraphs to Book IV of Plato's Republic (discusses the point of creating city-states in Greece); 2) The 1 st paragraph of Federalist 9 and the 6 th paragraph of Federalist 10 (asserts that the US Constitution protects citizens from themselves); 3) The "Harm Principle" from chapter one of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (proposes that the prevention of harm is the responsibility of the government as well as the individual); 4) Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (espouses the higher call of governments and citizens to be responsible for the happiness of all people).
Several common questions should be answered by each group. The questions: 1) Who is writing this? When? What is the context? 2) What words or phrases jump out at you? Why? 3) What is being said about the role of common people? How can you tell? 4) What is being said about the role of governments or people in charge? How can you tell? 5) How would you answer the focusing question after reading this excerpt? Once these questions have been answered in the primary groups, one member from each of the 4 groups should come together to form the secondary groups - a group where one student is the expert on his or her source. The same five questions will be answered, but discussion will ensue as to how each source approaches the focusing question. Once students have finished sharing and discussing, they should begin the homework assignment which will be shared out the next day: write a paragraph discussing whether the authors of these sources are addressing the democratic ideals we defined in class with their ideas. A great way to cap the lesson is to show School House Rock, The Preamble to the class as a lesson on what the Founders actually decided to announce as the purposes for forming the United States government.
Lesson Three: Creating a Children's Book
The objective of this lesson is to have students comprehend the results of democracy in America and to judge whether those institutions facilitate or encumber the growth of democracy in the nation. This lesson could take anywhere from one to three 45-minute periods to complete depending on the level of the learners and the desire of the teacher to foster creativity. It is the only lesson in the unit that will appeal to more visual learners. The standards addressed in this unit are 5.1E and 5.3A.
Students should start the lesson off by answering the pre-class question: "Is America becoming more or less democratic as time goes on? Why or Why not?" There will undoubtedly be two camps with varying explanations for their answers and these should be discussed briefly. A class handout should be made with the information contained in the rationale of this unit under the heading "The Results of the American Democratic Experiment". Students should take turns reading the sections aloud and discussing the implications of the different institutions of our modern democracy and whether or not these things lead us to be more or less democratic. Once it is clear that the students understand the institutions and their role in adding or subtracting from democratic aims, the activity of creating a children's book can be introduced.
The students should create the books in small groups (no more than three students). Because there are four results (electoral process, judicial review, amendments, and political parties) there should be about 12 students working on each book - three students in each of four groups; more than one book can be made in larger classes. Each small group is responsible for 2 pages of the book, text and illustrations. The first page should explain the institution in words that a kindergartener or first grader would understand. For example: "Political parties are groups of people with lots in common. They think the same way about how Americans should live, work, and play. People who get chosen to lead the country come from one of two parties - the Republicans (elephants) or the Democrats (donkeys)." The second page gives the group a chance to decide whether the institution is helping or hindering democracy in America. For example: "Many people like belonging to political parties, but sometimes not everyone gets invited to join. Not everybody likes the elephants and the donkeys, so people who don't have a party to join get left out of making decisions. This isn't very fair and some people even think that the political parties should be gotten rid of all together!" Students should be encouraged to come up with their own opinions for this piece. Once each group has written and illustrated their pages, the book can be bound together by the teacher and should be read as a children's book, first to the class so that they can learn from each other and second to a group of younger students (if the possibility presents itself). The book is the culminating assignment of the lesson and so any homework given would be reflection upon what was learned by the experience.
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