Lesson+Plans

Standards ISTE

__**Lesson Plans for Social Studies**__ [|Teacher Planet] Site that provides quality lesson plans and teaching tools in a variety of subjects and areas of study. It's free and easy to use, and the information is provided by teachers who have come up with the lesson plans themselves.

[|Declaration of Independence v. Communist Manifesto] Number 66 on the list of lesson plans provides an activity that compares the Communist Manifesto with the American Declaration of Independence. This activity includes a quiz that is to be given before going over each document in detail. This is intended to see where students are at in terms of knowledge of the two documents. Once the quiz is given, the teacher can have students share their answers as to which statement they felt matched which document. This activity acts as an introduction into the differences between democracy and communism and it allows students to become familiar with ideas of the two types of government. This can be used to help explain the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, or it could be used to discuss effective forms of expressing the beliefs of a nation.

[|Causes of WWII] Number 81 on the list of lesson plans provides a group activity to help students understand the causes of World War II. It includes dividing students into groups so that they represent various participants in World War II. The students are able to take on the role of the various leaders involved and create a resume for them, they can create posters with a list of the various causes for each nation, or they can create flow charts that link the causes associated with each nation to the eventual arrival of the war itself. The students are then able to share their work with the class. This allows students to take a more in depth look into the different sides of this important event, while also creating a product that will help their classmates understand their research and the varying sides in relation to their own work. This is a good tool to help get the students involved in the subject matter, but it also forces them to look into the different perspectives of this major event, not just the American side of things.

[|Presidential Campaign] Number 18 on the list provides students with the opportunity to gain insight on to how a political campaign works. The students are divided into groups and one student from each group is chosen to be a candidate. The rest of the group must then act as their campaign committee in working to get them elected as President. This helps the students understand how an election works. It is a very complex process that often times gets overlooked. This puts the students into the roles associated with an election campaign and it helps them to better understand the process in its entirety. It also gives them something fun to do as the teacher can add a competitive element to the assignment. The teacher can actually hold an election in the classroom and offer various points to each group as the election process is complete, the winner gets the most and then it goes down throughout the ranks.