About Us
Congress: The Context
SUBJECTS
U.S. Government, Civics, U.S. History
GRADE LEVEL
9-12
OBJECTIVES
A dramatic scene in a high school government or civics class provides the setting. Students follow a process of inductive reasoning in a situation which is especially relevant to their daily lives. In the scene, the teacher grants a student permission to get a drink of water and the student begins to leave the room. But does he or she have “implied” authority to get out of his seat, open the door, and walk out into the hall?
LESSON PLAN
Teachers can use the classroom drama in a variety of ways. Copies can be distributed for students to read silently or aloud as a drama. Teachers can assign parts, assuming the role of the teacher themselves and acting out the scene with their students. It might be considerably more effective, however, for teachers simply to take their cue and opening lines from the script and let an analogous scene unfold in their own classrooms. Teachers who do this might find it useful to control the discussion by stopping the spontaneous classroom performance periodically and referring students to pertinent sections of the script. This tactic might help to clarify the discussion or get it back on track. At these points, students could give dramatic readings of relevant portions of the script and compare their own ideas to those evolved by its characters.
As a follow-up:
Call attention to the similarity of the students’ role in the script for identifying implied powers (those powers which are necessary and reasonable) and the “elastic clause.”
RESOURCES
CREDIT
*Adapted from: White, Joseph L., Teaching About the Constitution, Eds. Clair W. Keller and Denny L. Schillings, NCSS Bulleting No. 80, Washington, D.C.: National Council for the Social Studies, 1987.
